Students ran around campus Wednesday night in the name of tradition, as they embarked on the Amazing Race  Traditions Challenge. Teams of four were sent out to various locations on campus to take pictures and learn more about the traditions and UNI campus’s history.

Jenna Salzbrenner, senior history education major, talked about the importance of the challenge.

“The traditions challenge is our way [of] promoting UNI through a different perspective,” Salzbrenner said. “Normally people look at the here and now, which is fine. There’s nothing wrong with that, but UNI has a lot of history and our job is to make sure the current students know about that. There are a lot of lost traditions that nobody knows about and we have those all over the Alumni House […] we try to bring back the really popular ones.”

This  year, the traditions challenge was outfitted with an app created by Russell Karim, senior computer sciences major.

“I think with his creation of the app, colleges are now calling because they want it too,” said Connie Hansen, the advisor for Connecting Alumni To Students (CATS). “We’re the first one to have as powerful a tool as we have. A couple other schools have apps, but nothing like ours.”

The app was released to the freshmen during orientation, followed by the general student body. Salzbrenner said it allows for the traditions challenge to be more mobile and more interactive.

“What’s cool about the app is we have push notifications,” said Salzbrenner, “so if we have a special event or there’s a basketball game or something that we want to highlight, […] the app will remind you,” said Salzbrenner.

For many participants of the Amazing Race, the goal was to learn more about UNI’s campus.

“I got to know campus a lot better,” said Alicia Hornfeck, senior elementary education major. “I mean, I already knew it slightly well but it really made us think about where everything is, and we all had different experiences that let us know where different things were based off our majors and what we’ve done on campus.”

“I think it gives them a fun way to race across campus,” Hansen said. “I love the fact that they do traditions during homecoming because I think it brings us all together.”   

Courtney Early, freshman English teaching major, felt the campus came together due to the Amazing Race.

“It keeps a sense of community with the people,” Early said. “It’s a sense of community and fun. It’s homecoming week.”

Some people may race once or twice, but Hansen said that teams that have raced all four years.

With 11 stops on this year’s race, each with its own picture requirement, teams participated in things like memory challenges, taste tests, the Interlude and estimation games.

There were a number of different challenges, including participants dancing the Interlude, Insomnia Cookies representing the College Hill Tradition, and even an activity where teams had to estimate how many donors — represented as 11,967 beads on a string — have contributed to UNI.

Participating teams also had a stop at the memorial garden, an uncommon place on campus that not many students know about, according to Salzbrenner. Hornfeck had two favorite parts of the race.

“I really liked doing the fight song with the UNI cheerleaders and the dance team,” said Hornfeck. “And I also liked when we found the last clue and it said ‘the end of alumni,’ I was like ‘that’s the Alumni House!’ and we all just took off booking to the Alumni House like full energy.”

With another Amazing Race Challenge completed, Hansen hopes students return and participate again next year.

“I always hope people will come back and do it again,” said Hansen. “I think it’s fun for them to be able to now put it either in their book or app, but I hope it’s just a great way for students to participate in something in homecoming that’s also linked to some of the rich heritage.”

“There’s so much stuff in college that’s important,” Salzbrenner said. “But people don’t really think about the history of their school while they’re here. They tend to think, like I said, [about] what’s going on now.”

The winner of the Amazing Race Traditions Challenge was the Camp Adventure group. For those who could not attend the challenge, the app is available for download from the App Story for Apple Products or Google Play for Android