Planning a Heretic (Scavenger) Hunt

October 9, 2012

I put all of the planning for SAIU's Heretic Hunt in our Social Director's hands. He came up with a list of things on campus to get your picture taken with, worth 1 point each, and we put up posters with various images on them for people to find and take down, worth 3 points each. Some of them were relevant, like a picture of the Milky Way on the door to the Kirkwood Observatory, some not so much, like a picture of a puppy on a bulletin board at the Indiana Memorial Union.

Jessika Griffin, president of SAIU.

I put all of the planning for the Secular Alliance of Indiana University (SAIU)'s Heretic Hunt in our Social Director's hands. He came up with a list of things on campus to get your picture taken with, worth 1 point each, and we put up posters with various images on them for people to find and take down, worth 3 points each. Some of them were relevant, like a picture of the Milky Way on the door to the Kirkwood Observatory, some not so much, like a picture of a puppy on a bulletin board at the Indiana Memorial Union.

People met in the community center and I paired them up (newer people with people who have been around longer, just a preference on my part) and they had 30 minutes to grab as many of the posters and get as many pictures as possible. We were planning to have one of our members dress as Jesus, where finding Jesus was worth 5 points, but we didn't get a costume put together on time. We will probably do this again as an end-of-year activity and be a little more elaborate.

Here's a list of the posters, in case that helps with other groups' planning:

Milky Way
Darwin Fish
Zombie Jesus
Muhammad
Invisible Pink Unicorn
An atom
The Flying Spaghetti Monster
A strand of DNA
An atheist A
A kitten
A puppy
A teapot

Here's a Google Doc link to the handout SAIU used. We tried to include common campus landmarks, so this would be a good event to help introduce new students to our unique campus as well as have a fun heretic connection.

About the Author: Jessika Griffin

Jessika Griffin is a fourth-year student at Indiana University studying public management and legal studies. She is also the president of the Secular Alliance of IU. Jessika was raised Catholic but has almost always lacked belief in a god.