On Fri. Oct. 9, Promoting Events And Programming Services, or PEAPS, hosted their annual escape rooms in the Student Center from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. The escape rooms offered students the chance to try their hand at working out puzzles, piecing together clues, and sorting through evidence in order to solve their choice of two different mysteries.

“We do escape rooms every year we’re able to in person, it’s one of our traditional events. Tonight it went really well, it was a little bit different… with the green screen [for COVID-19]… We filled out all of our time slots, everyone got a chance to participate, some people more than once,” said Will Montgomery, third-year SSU student who leads a team of student assistants for Student Involvement.

“We get hired to run all over the country and set up short-term escape rooms, they’re sort of like an appetizer of an escape room. They’re fifteen minutes long, for five people. Not fully immersive, but it gives a little bit of a taste, gets your mind flowing, working on some puzzles and figuring out some problems,” said Alex Brock, the person who is in charge of setting up and facilitating the escape rooms. 

“Each room is a little bit different, we certainly don’t just copy the same set of puzzles and put a different graphic to it. Each room’s got its own unique flare. Expect to show up and have to work together. A lot of our puzzles force you to have more than one person involved, that way one person can’t just drive through the room and figure everything out for the group… If it’s folks who have never met before, It melds the group together and [helps you] meet new people,” continued Brock. 

Friday’s rooms had two themes: CSI Crime Scene, and Medieval Museum. In the Medieval Museum room, teams had to solve puzzles in order to unlock the padlock on a case, using a single word. There was a heat-sensitive canvas with numerous letters and numbers on it, and a self-heated bean bag, which when pressed onto the canvas, revealed hidden clues. There was a puzzle box that revealed a clue once teams figured out how to open it, as well as a book of photos teams had to sort through in order to find missing pieces to a word puzzle.

“We just thought it was a good opportunity to have fun, hang out with people, and escape rooms are really fun,” said third year SSU student Leah Vallespin, regarding their motivation to visit the escape rooms. Leah and their team successfully completed the Medieval Museum room in only 12 minutes, leaving plenty of time to spare.

The CSI Crime Scene room offered participants a chance to put themselves in the shoes of a detective. This room offered a bag of evidence, including surveillance photos with suspects’ descriptions on them, eye witness reports, criminal history reports, a mysterious jacket, employee badges, timesheets, and more. The room even had a laptop labeled as a “Police System Interface”, with a timer countdown, and different tabs for various clues to be entered.

“We heard about escape rooms, and I used to work at an escape room, so I wanted to see what was going on. It was really fun … getting to hang out with my coworker and her roommate. Just a nice, casual social thing,” said Eryn Lang, a third-year SSU student, after trying their hand at the CSI room with two other group members. 

PEAPS is in charge of planning entertaining events just like this one, for students to enjoy on the weekends. “We try to focus on giving people things to do on campus… We offer movies… DIY crafts… We will bring back “Get A Way” trips in the spring, and on Friday’s we typically host a variety of events… Our home base events are karaoke, open mic, trivia, game contests, and bingo/grocery bingo. This year we are mixing it up a bit by hosting a casino night, spirit events at athletic contests… escape rooms… We have really gotten a lot of people at the weekend programs thus far!” wrote Mo Phillips, Director of Student Involvement, in an email. 

“I lead the team of student assistants that help Mo run all of the events [and] research the events. It’s my job to make sure the students have the best experience they can, things run smoothly, and that the students and the vendors have everything they need to have a good time,” said Montgomery. With an event like this one, PEAPS was able to achieve their goals of promoting a fun and entertaining event for students, providing an engaging Fri. night for all students involved.Be sure to check out the “Events” tab on the Seawolf Living website to find more Fri. and Sat. events facilitated by PEAPS and its student-led team.