When sophomore Thomas Potter walked into the thrift sale at Sigma Chi, he didn’t expect to purchase the shoes that he had traded the night before.

Potter had surrendered his shoes to win points for the Simpson Scavenger Hunt, and the next day, he accompanied friends to the fraternity thrift sale. 

“I look, and there they are,” Potter said. “My shoes are there on the rack. I think to myself, ‘do I want to buy back my crappy ol’ shoes?’ What’s going on here? But I ended up purchasing them for a grand total of $2 — probably the cheapest thing they were selling. They were in bad condition.” 

Potter’s lost and found shoes weren’t the only product of the third annual Simpson Scavenger Hunt. Several men of Simpson sacrificed a head of hair to buzz cuts for competition points, according to sophomore and resident assistant Alex Buehrer, who helped run the event. 

The Simpson Scavenger Hunt is an annual fall semester competition between the six halls of Simpson competing as single teams. The competition presents a list of 100 challenges, divided into four levels: easy, moderate, hard, and insane. For every challenge completed, halls win 10, 25, 50, or 100 points, with a winner determined at the end of night, Buehrer said. With high stakes, like losing hair and shoes, comes high incentive: the winning team enjoys catered Chick-fil-A.

“We always try to do it at the beginning of the year because it’s a good way to kind of introduce guys and get them involved in the dorm culture,” Buehrer said. “Like everyone came out knowing a lot more guys. It gives guys something to be excited about and have fun with, sort of trial by fire.”

The Scavenger Hunt idea originated with senior Zach Ponraj and his then-roommate Eli Redding. 

“It was like 2 a.m. on some weeknight and we were brainstorming ways we could host an event to build hall connections in anticipation for homecoming,” Ponraj said. “Once we came up with the idea for a scavenger hunt of challenges across campus, the ball started rolling. We knew from experience that we’d need a good incentive to get people to come; we sent out a dorm-wide with the subject line “FREE CHICK-FIL-A” and that generated a ton of buzz.”

The men of second floor south side, more commonly known as 2FS, won this year’s competition and recently enjoyed personalized Chick-fil-A orders, a new feature that just exceeded a bulk restaurant order, Ponraj said. 

Ponraj said the idea behind the scavenger hunt was to introduce guys to their respective halls which later factors into the inter hall and dorm community. 

“The two to three hours you spend with your hall on the hunt really changes that and watching guys laugh and swap stories together late into the night is awesome,” Ponraj said. “That’s really the whole point of the event — means to an end with a fun incentive to bond guys closer to the other guys on their halls.” 

One moderate challenge was eating a dozen eggs, prepared anyway, or not at all.

“It’s either raw or microwave,” Buehrer said. “People aren’t gonna spend the time to make some nice scrambled eggs.” 

Other challenges included getting three Head RA signatures in a triangle around a man’s belly button, sophomore RA Joe Vankat said. Some teams attempted a reenactment of George Washington crossing the Delaware. Every team rang Broadlawn’s doorbell and asked to use the restroom, according to Buehrer.

“One of my favorite challenges was that your whole team had to go, and they had to dance to a song at Swing Dance Club,” Vankat said. “So that probably caught them a little off guard. But people think it’s funny and enjoy it from afar.” 

The scavenger hunt tradition has surpassed a simple Simpson ritual and becomes an anticipated campus event, according to senior Hannah Arends. 

“Getting the rest of campus involved in little ways is a chance for those outside of Simpson to have a laugh and make a hillsdale memory,” Arends said. “At Kappa, we love to sit on the patio and watch the teams run around.” 

One of the challenges required a picture in front of the Kappa house, and Arends said she and other Kappas required the men to serenade before they could snap a pic. She said the night brought some funny renditions of romantic songs and lots of laughs.

“Campus wouldn’t be the same without Simpson and the scavenger hunt is a chance to see their shenanigans in action,” Arends said. “The goofiest things on Hillsdale’s campus are the moments that make our culture so strong and unified.”