Best Buddies treasure friendship

Avast! Members of Pitt’s Best Buddies club grabbed their mateys, donned their eye patches and hooks and set sail on their annual pirate-themed Midnight Madness Scavenger Hunt in hopes of scoring some booty for Best Buddies Pennsylvania and promoting social inclusion on Sunday.

The event began at 11 a.m. in the William Pitt Union and served as both a bonding experience for Pitt Best Buddies participants and a fundraiser for Best Buddies Pennsylvania, the Pitt chapter’s umbrella organization. One hundred and forty-four clues, including a treasure section and 14 trivia questions, routed the participants around Oakland in a quest to collect the most points and win the hunt.

After the event kicked off and teams began planning their routes in the Kurtzman room of the William Pitt Union, crews of people wearing dark purple shirts hit the streets of Oakland, snapping pictures in front of important monuments, high-fiving strangers and collecting donations to rack up points.

Heather Shiwarski, the program manager of Best Buddies, said the organization is a nonprofit that provides opportunities for social inclusion to children and adults with disabilities, who students take on as their “buddies.”

“A lot of the time for the people in our program, this might be their first opportunity to have a friend,” Shiwarski said.

At the start of the hunt, the club had already fundraised $1,500 through registration and donations for the event and was hoping to have others sign up throughout the day. In the end, the club had 65 people register to search for hidden treasure. This was below their estimated goal, but club members expected a lower turnout because of the cold weather and a larger event they held the night before.

Brittany Bauer, president of Pitt’s Best Buddies chapter, led one team of students and buddies on a quest for treasure. Her team’s strategy was to begin with the clues that required photos of the entire team. They already had an advantage over the competition because they had collected the most donations, receiving 100 points for every $5 donated to the cause.

The team captured more points by huddling in front of Dippy the Dinosaur near the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, surrounding the fountain in front of the Cathedral of Learning and posing like body builders. For each clue, the team takes a photograph, which is later reviewed to tally points for the teams. Some photographs required more imagination, such as a crew member burying treasure, pretending to be a bear or posing upside-down.

In the treasure section of the hunt, team members had to travel through Oakland collecting random items from various locations. Among the various items they could collect were straws from five different places, a sea shell, three different editions of The Pitt News and a pink crayon.

Ben Ware, a senior economics major who has been a member of Best Buddies for two years, said that staging a sword fight with sticks in front of the Cathedral of Learning was his favorite activity during the hunt. Over the last two years, Ware has become very close with his buddy, Dorian.

“I didn’t really have much experience dealing with people with intellectual disabilities before I joined Best Buddies … But I’ve gotten really close with my buddy … He loves WWE, and I’ve actually started following WWE after being his buddy,” Ware said.

At about noon, a fire alarm interrupted the event, causing the evacuation of the William Pitt Union and forcing Bauer’s team to postpone its original plan to tackle the clue “a crew member with as many different panthers around campus” until he and his team members were allowed back into the Union.

Just after the evacuation, Bauer expressed the frequency with which the Best Buddies have to work under the motto “just go with it” and practice flexibility during events. The club re-entered the Union by 1:30 p.m. for its scheduled lunch time.

During lunch, Bauer’s team worked quickly to finish the trivia round of the competition. The team had to answer a variety of questions about Pittsburgh and Pitt’s campus, such as, “How many windows does the Cathedral of Learning have?”

After lunch, the teams accrued a bonus of 100 points for creating Harlem Shake videos. The points were then tabulated, and the end scores between teams were incredibly close. In the end, Sig Delt Madness, a team comprised of a few Sigma Delta Tau sisters, came out on top with 2,700 points.

The event tried to stress that everyone is a winner, with each team receiving a prize. Bauer’s team received the award for the most money fundraised.

At the conclusion of the scavenger hunt, students and their buddies ate dinner together and then held a dance with a live DJ in the Ballroom of the William Pitt Union to celebrate their achievement and the funds they raised for Best Buddies Pennsylvania.

Shiwarski said the scavenger hunt was beneficial for every buddy.

“It provides the students and the participants with an opportunity to see a person for who they are,” Shiwarski said.