Every year, homecoming comes and you walk around campus looking at people having huge smiles on their faces. However, every year, there’s always this one group of people that have no idea what is happening on campus and have expressions of obvious concern on their faces. These are the people that I like to call the blindfolded swans of this campus. Why? Because they go on with their lives every day without reading one thing about student life and events going on around campus, even though there is posters, online advertising and people literally shouting about these things daily EVERYWHERE. The one question I have heard one too many times in my 2.5 years here, is “what are all these people doing dressed up in weird stuff and asking for money? That’s weird.”
Well, let me tell you my little swans what these people are. And before I tell you what they are, I need you to know that I’ve been one of them and I fully support them in what they do. Every year, FUSAB (Furman University Students Activities Board) gets a theme and organizes the majority of the homecoming week activities. One of them is called HAVOC. This is a game/competition that people need to apply in order to participate in and its purpose is to have fun while raising money for a charity of their choice. This competition starts on the Sunday before homecoming week with the players’ introductions outside the library. The players dress up being a character of their choice that fits into the theme of the homecoming week. There are two basic things about this competition:
- people get eliminated daily based on how they do on their daily challenges and how much money they raise (and how much the other players like them), and
- they have to sleep in tents outside the library and not shower for as long as they stay in the game.
So as I mentioned earlier I am a past HAVOCer, and it was one of the best experiences I have ever had on this campus. I met people I wouldn’t have met otherwise, I had to get way out of my comfort zone and ask people for money, and I spent a week sleeping in a freezing tent, and didn’t shower in 5 days. It sounds awful but it was magical. Last year’s homecoming theme was Disney, so I decided to be Mulan and I raised money for the Julie Valentine center which is a sexual assault and child abuse recovery center in Greenville, SC. I made it to the last day but didn’t get to be on the top 3, because I couldn’t unfreeze a tshirt and wear it fast enough (that was the “frozen” themed challenge last year) so I got kicked out. However, I did raise ~$850 for my charity, which is more than I could ever dream of. Up to this day, a year later, I still talk with all my HAVOC friends and we still talk about all the fun we had together. A friend of mine, RJ, was Mushu in HAVOC and he actually won the contest (and he won $1000 because of that!) and we still scream to each other “TEAM CHINAAAAA” whenever we see each other around. It’s great. All this to say, the HAVOCers are not fools. They know how to have fun and they sure have a big heart for putting all this time and effort to raise money for charity. Just saying!
