Germantown Student Life Inaugurates First Raptor Egg Hunt

By Rachel Taylor, Editor in Chief 

As part of Welcome Week, the Germantown campus participated in a brand new event–the Raptor Egg Hunt. The name is self-explanatory: eggs were hidden around the campus for students to find. Each egg contained a number of tickets, which can be redeemed at the Student Life office for various prizes.  

There were different tiers of prizes; five tickets for a small prize, 20 tickets for a medium prize, and 50 for a large prize. On top of that, there was the Golden Egg, a larger egg that contains a $200 bookstore gift card. The event, which took place September 5 – 8, also was held on the two other MC campuses. 

The Golden Egg was found by student David Carpio on Friday morning, shortly after a clue was sent out via the Student Life texting service. Clues for the egg hunt were communicated to students who had signed up to receive text message updates from Student Life. The primary goal of the egg hunt was to “get students to sign up for the texting service,” said Surayya Johnson, director of Student Life in Germantown. The egg hunt also helped students to become more familiar with the campus and meet others students searching for eggs.  

The Student Life staff hid the eggs, which were hidden all around campus and put out “all through the day,” Johnson said. As the eggs were returned when students redeemed tickets for prizes, the eggs were restuffed and sent out to be hidden again. Enough purple plastic eggs for all three campuses were bought online. At the Germantown campus, there were 500 eggs in rotation used in the egg hunt.  

Despite rainy weather on Wednesday, the egg hunt went on. It turned out to be quite a hit among students. “We didn’t realize how popular it would be,” Johnson said. She estimated that about 100 or more people are participating in the egg hunt, based on the number of people who signed up for the texting service.  

The eggs were hidden to different degrees; in some places they were fairly obvious yet in others they were more tucked away. One such hiding place was in the curl of the back of a bench at the bus stop in the parking lot. Other eggs were hidden among the flowerbeds around campus.  

Somewhat surprisingly, Johnson found that some eggs out in the open had not been picked up, while the more hidden eggs were gone. She thinks that it is because the students are “so focused on looking for something hidden,” so they pass over the more obvious eggs.  

Since the Egg Hunt turned out to be a popular activity, Student Life has been thinking that they will probably do it again, perhaps in the spring. “We’re pretty pleased with it,” Johnson said, although she thinks there will be a few changes made for next time.  

One thing she hopes would go differently for a future egg hunt is the speed at which students redeem the eggs. It seemed that many people were stockpiling the eggs they had found, which meant that there were fewer eggs to recycle and put back into circulation for the hunt.  

Other Student Life events occurred as part of Welcome Week on the Germantown campus including the service learning fair on Tuesday, and Club Rush on Wednesday and Thursday.  

In addition, there was Fun Friday, where free pizza was served. Two dozen pizzas were ordered and in the span of about an hour, all of it was gone. Wasps zipped around in the air both days the events were held outside.  

Wednesday’s Club Rush was held inside the lower level of the HS building due to inclement weather. The Germantown campus has over 50 clubs, which all had sign up sheets at Club Rush so students could leave their name and contact information for the clubs they were interested in. Johnson said that Club Rush seems to work, as the clubs “have a good number of members” and holding Club Rush “does translate to more membership and more active members.”