Trick-or-treating started a little early this year for students supporting the University's capital campaign.
For the third anniversary of the fundraising initiative - and its tagline, "Boldly Brown" - organizers lured students to a party using cake and a campus-wide scavenger hunt that landed them free campaign t-shirts.
Sayles Hall was host to a festive celebration, including giant rectangular cakes on either side of the room. The Bear Necessities sang Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "American Girl," and a giant card in the middle of the room was covered in red-penned birthday messages for the campaign.
"It seemed really fun - there was cake," said Michael Williams '10. "It seemed like a celebration of what had come to fruition."
Yesterday marked the third year of the $1.4-billion Campaign for Academic Enrichment as well as the end of the clue hunt that is the latest in a series of promotions designed to spread enthusiasm for the campaign among students. Since it began in 2005, the campaign has raised $1.25 billion toward its goal.
For the clue hunt, which started Oct. 20, a mass e-mail was sent out with four fairly easy clues pointing to locations where students could find cards with the letters B, O, L and D. Clue hunters turned in the cards at yesterday's party in exchange for this year's edition of the Boldly Brown t-shirt.
Each of the cards, collected at the Maddock Alumni Center, Rockefeller Library, the Blue Room and the Financial Aid Office, contained information about how the capital campaign relates to, and in some cases, has made major contributions to life in that building.
"We call it 'The Amazing Race,'" said Johanna Corcoran, the assistant director for student programs for the Brown Annual Fund, referring to the reality television show.
Corcoran said the race, organized by the Boldly Brown Student Campaign Committee, was meant to "generate excitement and enthusiasm for what's happening" as a result of the campaign. There were only 200 copies of each letter (and ultimately, each t-shirt) produced, she said, "because we wanted to create excitement and buzz around it."
The desk of Maren Nelson, coordinator at the Maddock Alumni Center, was the first stop in the clue hunt. "The first day was last Friday, but people were here on Thursday," she said.
As of last Oct. 24 - a week into the clue hunt - two thirds of the B-cards were already in students' hands. Students who collected cards at Maddock also received information from Nelson. "We like to have students come in and visit, and I can tell them about the house," she said.
The card contained information about organizations housed by the Maddock Alumni Center as well as alumni contributions to the Annual Fund. The clue hunt "was trick-or-treating fun," Nelson said. "We have to do this again."
The search for the O, L and D cards brought students to buildings and organizations that are affected by the capital campaign. The O-card, which could be found at the Rock's circulation desk, described plans for aesthetic renovations as well as the addition of a multimedia lab. It also described plans for the re-opening of the study area in the John Hay Library.
The L-card, retrieved from the cash register in the Blue Room, contained information about the plans to transform Faunce House into the Stephen Robert '62 P'91 Campus Center, a process that will begin this summer.
The D-card, retrieved from the financial aid office, recounts how aid is becoming the largest section of the University's budget, an increase that the campaign will help pay for.
