Brightly colored duct tape marks safe zones around campus buildings as Asbury once again holds its annual game of Taggers vs. Survivors. For the past eight years, the whole campus has been invited to play and a week-long game that has students and some faculty members running around with bandanas and Nerf guns.
The first year it was introduced to the campus, there were almost four hundred participants, but in recent years, the number has dropped to about one hundred. This year, Taggers vs. Survivors started on Sept. 26 and ended Oct. 3. Participants enrolled for the game online and received a code that acted as their identification throughout the game.
There were some rule changes with 2019’s Taggers vs. Survivors. This year, junior Quinn Endicott was in charge of the game and decided to limit it to lower campus, making the boundary West Main Street in front of the Miller Communication Arts Building. The main hot spot for game action, right outside the cafeteria doors, was expanded as well.
“Last year, there was a bit of a problem where everyone was huddled around the front door of the cafeteria, and anyone who wasn’t playing couldn’t get in, so it was kind of messy,” senior and moderator Austin England said. “We wanted to make it easier for people who aren’t playing to not get disrupted.”
Taggers vs. Survivors is a campus-wide game of tag, but players can defend themselves with Nerf guns to keep from being tagged and wear bandanas to indicate their playing status. The goal is to either remain untagged for as long as possible or to tag as many people as possible, depending on a player’s designation at the start of the multiple-day event. Each day there is a mission for participants to complete, until the final mission on Thursday evening. In the last few years, there have been no Survivors left by the end of the week.
“I love the thrill of it,” England said. “Just running around on campus, making little routes in between classes and trying to figure out ‘How can I avoid getting tagged?’”
