Two Humans vs. Zombies incidents create questions about risk management

With the largest turnout yet, Humans vs. Zombies players are trying to strictly enforce rules in hopes of becoming an official campus organization. However, two incidents this fall indicated questionable risk management of the group.

Humans vs. Zombies is "a game of moderated tag commonly played on college campuses," according to

humansvszombies.org.

Two of the game's moderators, senior J. W. Vineyard and junior Blake Mueller, said that this semester's game was the largest yet, with approximately 470 students signed up to play and 350 participating, an increase from last semester's 250 participants.

One incident from HvZ play this semester resulted in a trip to the hospital for a student last Friday, Vineyard and Mueller said.

A zombie was chasing a human toward the doors at the back of Ophelia Parrish by the double set of stairs.

"The zombie jumps down the first set of stairs and he jumps down the second set," Vineyard said. "He lost his balance whenever he jumped and he hit the concrete hard. He scratched his face up - he ended up having to get a couple stitches along his chin. He did hit the ground hard enough to evoke a seizure."

Mueller and Vineyard said the student called from the hospital to tell them he was fine and only needed a few stitches, but that he would not be participating for the rest of the game.

HvZ moderators declined to release the student's name.

The other incident involved rowdy behavior outside Baldwin Hall during a music festival which resulted in a noise complaint filed with the Department of Public Safety, Mueller said.

Vineyard said the players were responsive to those incidents.

"Throughout the rest of the game, every mission, every e-mail, we always told our players, ‘Avoid Baldwin, avoid OP, be very conscious of these people' - and they were," Vineyard said.

Mueller said that to make things safer, the moderators haven't implemented new rules, but they have emphasized existing ones - including the rule against making their ‘blasters' visible inside of buildings.

Sgt. Chad Whittom of DPS said HvZ moderators have been working closely with DPS to prevent undue alarm, including dealing with complaints and disturbances. He said they have been meeting with HvZ participants to talk about the rules and how to run the game in a safer manner.

"With this type of game, you have a situation where it can easily be misinterpreted as something else or could be interpreted as a hazard that's not really there, and so we don't want to cause alarm," Whittom said. "We don't want to disrupt the other activities that are happening on campus. They've tried to be proactive in setting up rules and administering their game in a way that doesn't cause problems."

Organizers are working to make HvZ an official  on-campus organization, so they are working with DPS to get feedback on ways to prevent negative incidents from occurring during the game, Vineyard said.

"We're not like a sport in that we don't have a set field, so we have a lot more dangers to account for," Vineyard said.

Lou Ann Gilchrist, dean of student affairs, said she is responsible for signing off on student organizations, but that she occasionally brings in others to help decide if the organization is in the University's best interests - especially if the organization presents "more than the typical risk of other student organizations."

"Certainly the events of this week give us reason to take a very close look at any risk-management policies that they may or may not have," Gilchrist said. "I believe the organizers this year and last year have worked very hard to create a safe environment for their members to participate in, but there are so many things that you can't control when you're talking about an activity that covers an entire campus."

HvZ has spent the semester creating a constitution and seeking out an adviser, moving toward being an official organization, Vineyard said.

Along with trying to become an organization, a group of HvZ players are setting up an invitational for the spring and inviting other schools in the Midwest to play for a day at Truman, sophomore Alex Dalecki said.

Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., hosted an invitational in September that Dalecki attended with 15 to 20 other Truman students. There they learned from the mistakes Ball State made and gained experience on how to run an invitational, The Truman invitational is scheduled for April 2, 2011.

"The week of games is more about living the life of HvZ, so to speak," Dalecki said. "You have to go to classes. You have to live your life with the worry that someone is going to come charging you down. You have missions once or twice a day during the main week, but most of the time your playing isn't focused around the missions. During the invitational, however, there's going to be almost no downtime. It's going to be mission after mission after mission."