Students roamed all over campus in search of the panther babies during the scavenger hunt on Thursday.

Students had to search high and low in order to gain the most points for their residence hall.

The panther babies could have been located anywhere on campus from Old Main all the way down to Andrews and Lawson halls.

At 9 a.m., residents grabbed their phones and flashlights and set out on the hunt to locate the panther babies.

While officially the scavenger hunt began early Thursday morning, many residents began searching since Monday night.

During the hunt, residence had to follow clues posted by the Residence Hall Association in order to locate the babies, which were paper cutouts of panthers.

Some of the clues included “This hall was named after the woman who wrote EIU’s Alma Mater” and “Need a parking permit? You can buy one here.”

One of the clues included for participants to take a picture by the University Police Department; however, after participants were told that they could not take pictures of the building, RHA members changed the clue from taking a picture of the police station to taking a picture of a parking permit.

As the residents were able to decipher these clues, they were able to find the panther babies.

Each panther baby was worth one point with the exception of the golden panther baby worth 50 points.

When residents are able to locate the panther babies, they take the code that is located on the inside and upload their photo to get the points.

Tyler Gordon a sophomore special education major, said finding the babies was a challenge.

“I thought it was a lot of fun, even though my group wasn’t able to find any of the panther babies,” he said. “They were really well hidden but it was still a lot of fun to go out and look for them.”

Cameron Greenbaum, a freshmen kinesiology and sports studies major, reflected on his experience participating in the hunt.

“I didn’t find one panther baby; they were really well hidden,” he said. “I looked over by the library, the bushes, by the clock towers and by heath services.”

Each residence hall had one person in charge of a flash drive.

The points that the residents gathered from the hunt went into the flash drive.

At 9 p.m., all the halls met at the clock tower to turn in their flash drive.

RHA vice president Kadie Peterson reflected on the success of the hunt.

“So far this week as gone really well; we’ve had a lot of attendance for the events,” Peterson said. “It’s been a team effort with my entire (executive) board and I’m proud of all of them.”

ROC Fest will conclude with a closing picnic from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow on South Quad.

The results from ROC Fest will be announced in the RHA meeting next week.

Luis Martinez can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].