As part of Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol (CMCA), a division of the Volunteers of America-Alaska, Charlie Daniels focuses on outreach to young adults. Her main goal is to reduce underage drinking in Anchorage through outreach to three groups: 1) the high school-to-21-year-old age group; 2) this groupās ānear-peersā (ages 21-28); and 3) adults who all-too-frequently enable young adults to obtain alcohol.
Sheās so concerned because 49 percent of Alaskan ninth-through twelfth-graders in Alternative High Schools report theyāre currently drinking, and 37 percent report theyāre binge-drinking. While considering what outreach was likely to attract students on the UA-Anchorage campus this September, Charlie happened upon the Humans vs. Zombies web site. Immediately, she decided to use this zombie version of tag in her September alcohol prevention event.
Past events included Drunken Super Mario and Drunken Carnival Games, both using the Fatal VisionĀ® Goggles and both successful education outreaches.
āAll your senses get dulled by alcohol,ā says Katie Daniels, Charlieās 24-year-old daughter and fellow CMCA staffer. āIt isnāt only the vision thatās impaired.ā She cites the example of games where students pass an object back and forth. The student wearing the Fatal VisionĀ® Goggles wasnāt even aware that something was being passed to them.
The goal for the 2012 outreach was to equal or surpass that impact on students, and Humans vs. Zombies had the appeal to do just that. āWe call it āedutainment,ā for the target population,ā Charlie laughs. āTheyāre not going to come to a lecture.ā
Charlie and Katie partnered with the UA-Anchorage, Monster Energy Drinks which supplied wristbands, and the Alaska National Guard Counterdrug Civil Operations (CCO) to host the Humans vs. Zombies games, two of which were scheduled on consecutive days over a weekend.
Each game started with one student in zombie costume as the original infected walking dead. At first, students found it easy to escape the zombieās infectious touch, but gradually more and more students got infected and had to turn their bandanas identifying them as human to the zombie side. To escape the zombies, students threw sock balls at them to temporarily halt their infection and freeze the zombie for ten minutes. Or students escaped in small groups to The Lab, where they completed alcohol education challenges.
The challenges included having to identify how much alcohol was in a drink using the SUM-It-CupĀ®. These humans were surprised to learn that when they order a Long Island Iced Tea, for instance, theyāre actually downing four servings of alcohol, not one. Enough to zombify them, for sure. āA lot of students were able to gauge it to real life,ā says Katie.
Students also wore Fatal VisionĀ® Goggles and attempted to drive remote-control cars through an obstacle course. Volunteer Lab workers asked each participant to identify the āobstaclesā as friends or family members to make it personal when the car they were driving plowed into one. The goggles were so popular that student volunteers vied to participate. Other challenges included Bowling with Body Parts in which students used a mannequin head or leg/arm to knock down pins and answered true-false questions about alcohol consumption.
āStudents were horrified to learn that if youāre popped for DUI in Alaska, you canāt drive through Canada, youāve got to fly home,ā says Charlie, noting the same is true for military families who are the outreach objects of the CCO. āThat can get expensive, especially for a family.ā
Katie, who ran the games on-site, wanted to focus in particular on alcohol and Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) education. Students were informed that 60 percent of STDs are transmitted while under the influence of alcohol.
The games were followed up both days by a huge barbecue, well-attended by humans and zombies alike.
Were the Humans vs. Zombies games successful? The UA-Anchorage gave the event a thumbs-up, according to Katie.
And Charlie laughs again. āItās cold in Alaska, but those kids ran into the creek to escape the zombies.ā
So that would have to be a yes.