University of Maryland freshmen spent their first weekend in college running through North Campus, trying to whack each other with pillows and pool noodles.
The students were locked into a giant game of granny. They spent the night of Aug. 30 laughing as they dodged their blind-folded peers.
The game started after a group of freshmen knocked on doors at Ellicott Hall, looking to meet new people. It was the first of many seemingly-random student-organized events on campus.
Students have since chased each other in a giant capture the flag game, competed in lookalike tournaments and duked it out in a rap battle.
“I’m really proud of my class for getting the word out and making these events so we can all be together and connect, because you only experience college once in your life,” said freshman American studies major Sahai Adjo.
Most of the events appear spontaneously organized, advertised on social media and mainly attended by freshmen. But they seem to have built community on campus.
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Post-granny popularity
A video of the students playing granny went viral on TikTok and amassed more than 300,000 views. Once the friends marked the game a success, they were ready to plan something new.
So the next night, the group threw a “performative male” contest.
The group, now named Twisted Terps, organized the event to search for who best adopts the social media archetype. The viral trend stems from the idea of men curating a persona to be more appealing to women by reading feminist literature, drinking matcha and listening to indie artists.
Contestants brought their totebags, wired earbuds and books to the contest, where they took turns performing in front of the cheering crowd on the McKeldin Mall compass. The event drew hundreds, crowning sophomore computer science major Joshua Zheng as the winner with a $25 cash prize.
“I think we should try to bring more initiatives like this onto campus,” Zheng told The Diamondback. “Promoting women’s rights and also just supporting women in general is a healthy thing to do.”
Redheads and riff offs
Other students took it upon themselves to keep the momentum going. The night after the performative male contest, freshman psychology major Parker Landau and freshman marketing major Ashley Morrison made a graphic advertising a rap battle outside Yahentamitsi Dining Hall.
They posted it on YikYak, an anonymous social networking app that connects users with others from their school. More than 100 students came to the event the next night.
“We really didn’t have any idea how many people were actually going to show up,” Landau said. “It lasted a while too.”
Students brought a speaker and crowded in a circle, cheering on each person who stepped up to freestyle.
“My rhymes are fly like the Y,” one of the students rapped. “Yours are 251.”
On Tuesday night, another crowd gathered outside Yahentamitsi Dining Hall for an Ed Sheeran lookalike contest.
They held their phone flashlights up to the sky and formed a swaying circle around a group of ginger-haired students sitting in the center. The crowd sang along to his song “Perfect.”
“It was hilarious, but it was actually really wholesome,” Morrison said.
Excited about the rap battle’s success, Morrison and Landau decided to organize another event. They threw a Pitch Perfect riff off at the same location, where dozens of students spent the night singing and clapping in a circle.
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Storming Pyon-Chen Hall
More events continued to pop up in the same area. A crowd of students “stormed” Pyon-Chen Hall, a dorm on North Campus. A video showing a group of students running at the building spread on social media. Other posts about “the raid” then circulated on YikYak.
Both Pyon-Chen and Johnson Whittle Hall are the newest, most modern dorms on campus. They’re named after former students who broke racial barriers at the university.
Some University of Maryland Police stayed outside Pyon-Chen and Johnson-Whittle halls after the raid.
Twisted Terps takeover
Freshman information science major Kaylynn Flemons said the random events on campus have helped students meet new friends. Most recently, dozens of students gathered on McKeldin Mall Sunday for a giant game of capture the flag.
Flemons is part of the group who organized granny, the performative male contest and capture the flag. The group named themselves Twisted Terps and started an Instagram page that has already reached nearly 2,000 followers.
Flemons said the group plans to host more events throughout the year, including more lookalike contests and sporting events. They may even become a university club.
At the end of the day, it’s all about having fun, Flemons said.
“This whole experience kind of showed me college students can have fun just being students, just being kids,” she said. “It’s really cool to me how people can come together so fast, even though we’ve only known each other for about a week.”
