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48-494: Snell–Hitchcock is known for having a high level of community spirit and involvement, which are best displayed at the annual University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt . As of 2015, the Snell–Hitchcock team has won 14 of the 29 hunts to date, and holds the longest winning streak (four years) in the history of the game. Hitchcock House's mascot is the armadillo . Snell House's mascot is the tortoise , after being recently changed from

96-542: A (nonworking) fireplace and large hearth. Section I was also home to noted astronomer, Emmy award winner, and Pulitzer and Hugo award-winning author Carl Sagan in the 1954–1955 academic year. Section V is built above the Green Room, a large lounge, which is properly known as the Charles Hitchcock Memorial Library. Unlike Section I the first two floors are alternating single-sex (female, then male) with

144-507: A kitchen, a bike storage room, and a laundry room. Each section has its own door onto Hitchcock's cloister (known as the Arcade), but the doors are used for exiting only and all entry must be through the main entrance or from Snell. The Snell–Hitchcock front desk and mail room are located in Hitchcock's main entrance. Hitchcock has two assistant resident heads (RAs) and one set of Resident Heads, often

192-417: A live-in graduate student couple. Built in 1892, Snell is half the size of Hitchcock, housing approximately 50 residents on four floors. It has the distinction of being one of the first women's dorms on a coeducational campus. In the beginning, it only housed women for two quarters; once the intended women's dorm opened, Snell was turned over to the men. All the rooms are singles, except for a two-room suite on

240-599: A monkey. Hitchcock was built in 1901, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places . It is built in a Collegiate Gothic style, like Snell and most of the University of Chicago 's campus, but has many Prairie School elements, such as stone corn husks instead of gargoyles and flat-roofed instead of gabled dormers. Hitchcock is built in the European "landing" style of dormitory with five stairwells linked through

288-416: A nearby beach, team captains kidnapped and forced to transcribe items onto their bodies with Sharpies, and copies of the list suspended from a wall six feet high ten feet away from a team representative, because "the floor is lava." Once a team has obtained the list, they travel back to their headquarters (usually a dorm lounge or apartment living room) to begin working on the list of items. Several hours after

336-444: A non-working fireplace, copious selection of periodicals and, notably to residents, a dog-eared copy of John Rechy 's novel The Sexual Outlaw . Snell has one resident assistant (RA) and one set of Resident Heads, often a live-in graduate student couple. University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt The University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt (or Scav Hunt , colloquially Scav ) is an annual four-day team-based scavenger hunt held at

384-637: A number of rioters. Rechy and the other two original detainees were able to escape. He later wrote about it in City of Night . Rechy is considered one of Mexican American Literature's founding authors, and based his early writings on Mexican values and cultural problems that were available to him in Mexican films. Though he is probably the best-known gay male Latino writer in the United States, his gay-themed work reflects little of his Mexican-American heritage, except for

432-608: A part of the Hunt since 1991. After the road trip qualifications, all "Scav Olympics" events are listed. These are original competitions designed annually and held on Eckhart Quad Saturday afternoon of the Hunt. In 2015, for each event, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place were worth 20, 15, and 10 points respectively, while 5 points were awarded to "(3 < x ≤ ∞)th place." After the list of "Scav Olympics" events, there are occasionally special lists, such as wedding-associated items in 2015, and "Scav All-Stars" items from 2004 to 2006. Finally, following

480-507: A particularly bad storm, the party was moved inside Cobb Hall. The theme that year was "visions of the future." ORCSA, the university administration body responsible for overseeing the Hunt, shut down the party due to intoxicated participants and alleged property damage. Items on the list include codes and cypher, large scale construction and engineering projects, performances, unusual sports, and difficult to acquire objects. Some items require connections to accomplish such as: get your Scav team

528-594: A prose so poetically crafted it sharpens our perception of both the beauty and the ache of the human experience." Writers Michael Cunningham , Kate Braverman , Sandra Tsing Loh , and Gina Nahai were students of Rechy's creative writing classes before becoming published authors. Rechy's contributions to women-centered narratives and the Chicana feminist canon are reflected in many of his works. Maria DeGuzman argues in her book, Understanding John Rechy , that "his decolonial Chicana feminist representations of women indicate

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576-449: A questionnaire and a sample list of 30 items. Applicants are chosen to interview with the existing judges based on merit. New judges are often previous team captains or perennial participants of the Hunt. Actual methods of judge selection, however, are kept secret. Fragments of the sample lists of the newly chosen judges are often added to next year's list. Applications for new judges open at the beginning of October. New judges are selected by

624-471: A repeated "we want the list". Then, at midnight, the judges (members of the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt Organizing Committee) run into the center of this gathering, and announce that year's list release challenge. Each challenge is designed to delay teams in acquiring a paper copy of that year's list of approximately 300 items. Previous examples have included the pages of the list buried under sand at

672-513: A shout out on the news, get a flag on the North Pole, or reach the lowest elevation possible (the winning elevation was reached in a submarine). Each year there are a handful of particularly large point items. There have typically been three showcase items per list in the recent past. These items are typically over 100 points each, but in the past it was not unusual for an individual item to be 500+ points. These items are judged in competition between

720-426: A wedding, a sleepover party with pillow and blanket forts, and a prom dance . Previously, this event took the form of a large party held on the main quads attended by scavenger hunt participants and nonparticipants alike. Usually, this party involved a theme. Each team would design their own section of the party with drinks and attire adhering to this theme. This long string of parties ended when, in 2006, during

768-506: Is a Mexican-American novelist and essayist. His novels are written extensively about gay culture in Los Angeles and wider America, among other subject matter. City of Night , his debut novel published in 1963, was a best seller. Drawing on his own background, he has contributed to Mexican-American literature , notably with his novel The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez , which has been taught in several Chicano studies courses throughout

816-511: Is a faculty member at the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He is the first recipient of ONE Magazine Culture Hero Award. In 2016, he won the first annual Los Angeles Review of Books/UCR Creative Writing Lifetime Achievement Award. At the 30th Lambda Literary Awards in 2018, he won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction for After

864-491: Is compiled solely by the panel of judges, though the panel also organizes other aspects of the Scav Hunt. Judges begin compiling the list after the end of each Scav Hunt weekend, and continue to add items throughout the year. Members of the panel are sworn to secrecy on the contents of next year's list. Any University of Chicago student with a GPA above 0.5 may apply to be a judge. Potential judges submit applications consisting of

912-707: Is held annually over four days in May, such that the final day's judgement of items is on Mother's Day . "The Hunt" begins ceremoniously at midnight of the Wednesday preceding Mother's Day weekend, with an event known as "List Release." The ceremony surrounding the unveiling of the list usually begins a few hours before midnight, as teams slowly assemble on the ground floor of Ida Noyes Hall . These teams (ranging in size from 1 to over 250) then participate in what has been described as collective effervescence , as they chant various team-based and humorous slogans, eventually coalescing into

960-609: Is the farthest from the front desk of Hitchcock and each floor is mixed-sex with a shared bathroom. It has some of the largest rooms in Hitchcock Hall, and includes several rooms known as "octagons" which are located in a turret-like structure and have many windows overlooking 57th and Ellis. The basement entrance to this section opens up into the common area that connects Snell and Hitchcock. Section I also contains "horseshoe doubles" (room #1x7), large doubles with separate niches and closets for each resident. The horseshoe doubles also have

1008-508: The New School for Social Research . The Cooper Do-nuts Riot happened in 1959 in Los Angeles, when the lesbians, gay men, transgender people, and drag queens who hung out at Cooper Do-nuts and who were frequently harassed by the LAPD fought back after police arrested three people, including Rechy. Patrons began pelting the police with donuts and coffee cups. The LAPD called for back-up and arrested

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1056-514: The University of Chicago from Thursday to Sunday of a week in May, typically ending on Mother's Day . The list of items, usually over 300 items long, encompasses cryptograms, competitions, build challenges, a 3 course meal, and a 1,000-mile (1,600 km) road trip. "Scav Hunt" is well known for its quirky, strange, and impossible items. Scav held the Guinness World Record for largest scavenger hunt from 2011 to 2014. The Scavenger Hunt

1104-526: The Blue Hour . In 2018, Rechy was also awarded with the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement noting that he is "a major figure in Mexican, LGBTQ and Los Angeles literary communities." In 2020 The Texas Institute of Letters honored Rechy with its Lon Tinkle Lifetime Achievement Award. TIL President Carmen Tafolla called Rechy's work "a significant turning point in modern American literature, and

1152-446: The Skin . He has written three plays, Tigers Wild (first performed as The Fourth Angel and based on Rechy's novel of that title), Rushes (based on his novel of the same title), and Momma as She Became—Not as She Was , a one-act play. Rechy was cited by journalist Amy Harmon in a 2004 New York Times article that reported about a computer glitch on Amazon.com that suddenly revealed

1200-529: The United States. But, even after the success of his first novel, he still worked as a prostitute, teaching during the day, and hustling at night. He worked as a prostitute into his forties while also teaching at UCLA. Through the 1970's and 1980's he dealt with personal drug use, as well as the AIDS crisis, which killed many of his friends. Rechy was born Juan Francisco Flores Rechy March 10, 1931, in El Paso, Texas. He

1248-448: The above sections, is the list of all general category items. Item lists are broken up into pages, with one or several judges contributing to the items on each page. https://scavhunt.uchicago.edu/assets/GBWR/KeyA.pdf https://scavhunt.uchicago.edu/sumter/ Road trip, one of the more original elements of the hunt, is constrained by several factors. The furthest destination may be no more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Chicago and

1296-482: The apartment for the Resident Deans, a live-in faculty couple. Traditionally, each section has had a women-only and a men-only floor, with the suite floor being either single or mixed-sex depending on the desires of the residents. The outermost sections of Hitchcock (Sections I & V) house primarily upper-class students. They have small hallways with six to eight residents per floor, many in single rooms. Section I

1344-527: The end of the calendar year. Judges are appointed for life, but are required to maintain eligibility to join a student organization to remain active. The head judge, known as the Scavenczar, is appointed at the end of the Scavenger Hunt each year. They oversee the planning and execution of the next Scav Hunt, until their successor is named. John Rechy John Francisco Rechy (born March 10, 1931)

1392-531: The fact that he has long understood the relationship that exists between misogyny and homophobia (against gay men as well as against LGBTQ+ more generally). The oppression of women and trans women (for example, "Troja" in Marilyn's Daughter ) is not just about Latinx communities; it is, in Rechy's work, also about the larger U.S. culture." English pop artist David Hockney 's painting Building, Pershing Square, Los Angeles

1440-446: The front cloister and basement, though only the basement is used now in order to ensure that the building is more secure. The three interior "sections" ( Sections II-IV ) are each built around a single staircase. Each interior Section consists of two floors of four double-rooms with a fourth floor that has two suites (doubles with a large living room and separate bedroom). Most of the rooms have non-working fireplaces. The first floor houses

1488-631: The history and traditions of Scav. On May 1, 2024, the eve of Scav 2024, they hosted a Meet the Founders panel, where Dr. Chris Straus, Cassie Scharff, Diane Kelly, Rick Jeffries, and Nolan McCarty talked about how it all began. The Scavenger Hunt committee is a registered student organization at the University of Chicago. The committee is made up of judges, those who make the list and determine item completion, and non-judges, who help with other administrative tasks. Judges are known as "Hot Side Hot" while non-judge members are known as "Cold Side Cold". The list

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1536-623: The identities of thousands of people who had anonymously posted book reviews. It was revealed that Rechy, among several other authors, had "pseudonymously written themselves five-star reviews, Amazon's highest rating". Amazon stopped accepting anonymous reviews as a result of this finding. In 2021 Rechy was at work on a new novel entitled Beautiful People at the End of the Line , inspired by "comic books and celebrity culture." Rechy says of his work, "An early admirer of my work labeled me 'an accidental writer' —

1584-532: The kind who writes randomly, off the top of his head, the way Kerouac is reputed to have done. But that's not true of me. I'm a very conscious writer, attentive to the right word, even the lengths of sentences, and punctuation for effect." Rechy is the first novelist to receive PEN-USA-West 's Lifetime Achievement Award (1997); he is the recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle (1999) and an NEA fellow. He

1632-552: The original LaTeX formats at 3:00 A.M. CDT on the Thursday of the Hunt. Since 2006, the list has begun with a set of official rules, including: After the official rules, a list of qualifying factors for the road trip portion of the scavenger hunt is included. These qualifying factors have been included in the list at the behest of UChicago's Center for Leadership and Involvement (the governing body for registered student organizations ) since 2006. The road trip, itself, though, has been

1680-670: The predominantly negative reviews the book received at the time of its publication, City of Night became an international bestseller. Alternately, it is also often included on lists of the most banned books in America. In addition to the dozen novels he has written to date, Rechy has contributed numerous essays and literary reviews to various publications including The Nation , The New York Review of Books , Los Angeles Times , L.A. Weekly , The Village Voice , The New York Times , Evergreen Review and Saturday Review . Many of these writings were anthologized in his 2004 publication Beneath

1728-753: The record, the Judges organized a miniature scavenger hunt during the 2011 Hunt. The smaller event was required to meet the Guinness World Record definition of a scavenger hunt. The Scav Hunt has since been officially surpassed for the title of the world's largest scavenger hunt by "Passport to Provo," an event organized by Provo and Google . Due to the COVID-19 pandemic , the 2020 and 2021 Hunts were held virtually. In 2024, The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center curated an exhibit titled Scav Hunt at UChicago: Seeking Fun, Finding Tradition about

1776-650: The release of the list the judges publish it online (usually around 3:00 A.M. CDT on the Thursday of the Hunt), thus making it available for teams unable to attend "List Release." Every year, teams attempt to complete items from a list of approximately 300. Each item is written, assigned a point value, and put onto the list by a panel of judges known as the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt Organizing Committee. The list has, since 1997, been formatted in LaTeX and released online in PDF and

1824-457: The second floor. Three of the four floors are of mixed sexes, while the third floor is women-only. A co-op kitchen, laundry room, and a small recreational room are located in the basement, which connects with Hitchcock Hall. Until 2014, when it was closed, Snell residents could enter the hall through a separate door from the main hall doors. Snell's main lounge is the Tea Room, an oak-paneled room with

1872-658: The section. It overlooks the Regenstein Library and Ratner Athletic Center and on a clear day the Sears Tower can be seen in the distance. It is usually one of the most sought-after rooms in the House's annual housing lottery. The main lounge in Hitchcock, the Green Room, is a large reading room with tiled floor, a grand piano, a working fireplace, and portraits of namesake Charles Hitchcock, benefactor Annie Hitchcock, and University of Chicago patron Daniel Shorey. Hitchcock also has

1920-617: The surnames of some of his characters. While Rechy was working on his first novel, installments began to appear in 1958 in literary magazines such as Evergreen Review , Big Table, Nugget , and The London Magazine . These excerpts were fictitious recreations of his life working as a hustler in New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans and appeared alongside writers like Christopher Isherwood, Jack Kerouac and Jean Genet. The largely autobiographical novel City of Night , debuted in October 1963. Despite

1968-452: The teams and points are awarded according to the ranking. Scav Hunt was founded in 1987 by Chris Straus, who organized the list and judged items collected by other residents of Hitchcock house, with Cassie Scharff, Diane Kelly, Rick Jeffries, and Nolan McCarty . Perhaps the most notable item that has yet been completed was from the 1999 list; a breeder reactor in a shed was successfully built in front of Ida Noyes Hall. The item itself

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2016-461: The top floor remaining mixed-sex. Section V has some of the more unusual rooms in Hitchcock, including several which have their own names. On the second floor of section V is the "Fermi Room," where Enrico Fermi is said to have lived while working on the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. It is rumored that he chose that room because it had its own bathroom with tub; though the bathroom remains,

2064-516: The trip must be completed between 8 a.m. Thursday morning and Saturday night. Additionally, road trip is completed with participants wearing ridiculous costumes. Items for the road trip are scattered throughout the main list. Drivers on the road trip are held to the following requirements: On the Friday Night of the Scavenger Hunt, there is usually a large themed event held in one of the gathering spaces on campus. In recent years, this event has been

2112-518: The tub was replaced with a shower in 2008. Linked to the Fermi Room is the Fermi Blackboard, which is said to be the same blackboard Fermi used to do his calculations, although this may be an urban legend . This possibility does not, nevertheless, detract from many students' desire to possess it. On the fourth floor is "The Ranch" (room 541), a sprawling single which extends across the north side of

2160-418: Was a joke referring to the "Radioactive Boy Scout" David Hahn . The students irradiated thorium with thermal neutrons and observed traces of uranium and plutonium . In 2002, Scav Hunt was the subject of a documentary titled The Hunt . The 2007 Scav Hunt was also the subject of a documentary, Scavengers . The Scav Hunt formerly held the Guinness World Record for largest scavenger hunt. To obtain

2208-467: Was granted early release from the Army to enroll as a graduate student at Columbia University . He applied for admission to a creative writing class taught by novelist Pearl S. Buck by submitting an unpublished draft of a novel he had written titled Pablo! While his application to Buck's class was not accepted, Rechy was admitted into the writing classes of Hiram Haydn , a senior editor at Random House , at

2256-747: Was inspired by a passage in City of Night . The 1983 song "Numbers" by the English synth-pop duo Soft Cell was inspired by Rechy's 1967 novel of the same title. A CD-ROM of Rechy's life and work was produced by the Annenberg Center of Communications and is titled Mysteries and Desire: Searching the Worlds of John Rechy . In 2019 the Wittliff Collection at Texas State University acquired Rechy's complete archive stating, "This treasure trove of letters serves as

2304-400: Was the youngest of five children born to Guadalupe (née Flores) and Roberto Sixto Rechy. Both of Rechy's parents were natives of Mexico; his father was of Scottish lineage. He earned a B.A. in English from Texas Western College (now University of Texas at El Paso ), where he served as editor of the college newspaper. Following graduation from college, Rechy enlisted in the U.S. Army. He

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