During reading week BUTANE (Bureau for Undergraduate Tradition And Nostalgic Enrichment) challenged students with a scavenger hunt that spanned the entire campus. Christian Vazquez describes the journey.

SPOILER ALERT – Do not read the following if you’d like to tackle the scavenger hunt yourself.

My adventure began in front of SML card-box 1701. I opened the box not knowing what to expect only to find that along the bottom was written:

”Follow the gaze of the modern head”

A quick Google search at a nearby computer led me to Roy Lichtenstein’s ”Modern Head” at the base of Science Hill. I recruited one of my suitemates for the trek up Hillhouse. Upon arriving at the statue, I carefully followed the sculpture’s gaze towards a wall on which was taped a map of what seems like Old Campus.

Under the light New Haven rain, I scoured about Old Campus searching for the coordinate the map pointed to. I looked all around the statue of Nathan Hale, on every lamppost and every tree. Just as I was ready to go back to my room and study for an exam my suitemate stumbled on a sewer drain with an email written address written on it. I sent a message to the address and was given a clue to the next location. The name contained within the email address was a Yale veteran of World War I whose name is inscribed on the Woolsey Rotunda.

The clue provided in the email was a code that I had to decipher using the names of war veterans one of the panels in Woolsey. I found four other students doing the same thing when I got to Woolsey. We deciphered the code which read: SML FOUNTAIN and made our way to the fountain in the small courtyard in the middle of Sterling. When we arrived at the fountain we moved looked around it and found a notes that read:

[ydn-legacy-photo-inline id=”1421″ ]

“the Shield of the

microScope

pointS the way”

We looked around SSS for a relief of a shield with a microscope along the top of the building to no avail until we came full-circle and found it. We found another email address and as the raindrops began to quicken I sent a message with my iPhone which led me to the final stop on the treasure hunt, the Timothy Dwight Common Room. The prize was a message inscribed scroll on a stained glass window that read:

“Someday, perhaps, it will be pleasant to remember all this.”

[ydn-legacy-photo-inline id=”1422″ ]

The message is a line from the “Aeneid” and the motto of Timothy Dwight College, but it rang true as the spring semester comes to a close and we all leave Yale for home, internships and in the case of the seniors the real world.