Students show BU spirit, win prizes in Beanpot scavenger hunt

While many Boston University students may still be feeling the sting
of a bitter Beanpot defeat at the hands of Commonwealth Avenue rivals
Boston College, the SCVNGR Beantown Challenge offers BU students the
chance to show their school spirit, and wage their own competition
against BC.

“I saw it was a little way to support BU and to stick it to BC,”
Matthew Bae, a College of Communication junior who participated in the
challege said.

SCVNGR, a student scavenger hunt involving BU, BC, Northeastern
University and Emerson College, coincides with the week of the
Beanpot, and is open to any student with a smart phone, according to
the SCVNGR website.

Debra Swersky, a spokesperson for the SCVNGR Beantown Challenge, said
the scavenger hunt involves students completing a series of 15
challenges around their respective campuses using a SCVNGR app
available for the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad or Android.

“We wanted to come to the student bodies with a fun way to connect
with each other and enjoy SCVNGR,” Swersky said. “We decided to play
off of the Beanpot competition that already exists and engage a larger
group of people in the competition.”

Swersky said participating students would have the chance to win
prizes including Celtics tickets, $800 in Student Universe travel
dollars and a grand prize of Social Boston Sports Varsity Cards to the
school with the most points at the end of the week.

The event kicked off Monday at BU’s Dugout Café, where students had a
chance to vie for the first prize of the challenge, the opportunity to
watch the first game of the Beanpot with BU Dean of Students Kenneth
Elmore.

Mike DeFilippis, a SCVNGR student organizer and College of
Communication sophomore, said that while the idea of the scavenger
hunt revolves around the Beanpot, students should be encouraged to
participate by the variety of prizes for the most enthusiastic teams.

“The idea really originates around Beanpot and bringing the four
Beanpot schools together in a SCVNGR competition,” DeFilippis said.
“Students participating can look forward to tons of awesome prizes all
throughout the week.”

SCVNGR, which has organized similar scavenger events in other college
towns, is a fun way for students from different schools to connect
with one another, Swersky said.

Andrew Dwyer, a College of Communication junior, said he saw the
SCVNGR challenge as an interesting twist on social networking
services.

“The thing that interests me most about it was that it is yet another
location-based social networking site,” Dwyer said. “I already use
Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare and I wanted to see what was
different in SCVNGR.”

DeFillipis said SCVNGR would connect students at BU around events
similar to the Beanpot in the future.

“We’re really looking to create a sort of social media consortium at
BU which we’re hoping to use in the future to notify students about
big events going on campus,” DeFillipis said.

While the Terriers may have lost the Beanpot, as of Tuesday night, BU
leads the SCVNGR challenge with more than 6,000 points, with BC in
second place with 569 points.