Students dodged whizzing bullets while surrounded by fluorescent colors during the School of Communication’s Neon Nerf War.
“We wanted some fun, after-hours, interactive event that people could come to. And so we thought that putting that on the last day of comm week would round out the week,” senior English major Jacob Rodriguez said.
Players shot their way through three different styles of games including team deathmatch, last man standing and humans vs. zombies.
“I liked the zombies vs. humans round,” sophomore Evan Thomas said. “That was really fun, inventive.”
The Neon Nerf War was held as part of communication professor JJ McIntyre’s event planning class for Communication Week.
“It is an elective in both the communication BA and BS and students get an opportunity to hone their skills and apply communication skills specifically to the event planning industry,” McIntyre said. “And so in this class, we plan many small events and some larger fundraising events for the future, and give students something to build their portfolios, in case they want to go into this as part of their career.”
The event was planned by Rodriguez, senior English major Colby Derr and senior public relations major Jaedynn Nooner.
Rodriguez said, “For our event planning class we had to plan a small event that got the School of Communication involved, and Dr. McIntyre had suggested that we do a Nerf war.”
McIntyre said that the idea had been around since before the pandemic.
“This was an opportunity to bring that idea back in, because there was a lot of interest in it, and I think it would connect to students that might not normally come to events for communication,” he said.
This is McIntyre’s first semester teaching the course.
“It’s been challenging for me and the students, we might have taken on quite a few different events. We had two this week in communication week,” McIntyre said. “So we had the Nerf War, and then we also had Squid Games. And so we were trying to make some events that were fun and student-centered for communication week.”
Senior Colton Hayes Pallone took part in both the Neon Nerf War and Squid Games.
“It [Squid Games] was also a lot of fun. We did the cookie game and red light, green light and then a rock paper scissors tournament. It was a good time,” Pallone said.
Although Pallone didn’t set up the Neon Nerf War, he is also in the event planning class.
“It’s been so fun. I think everybody’s really enjoyed it. And the different games have been even more fun than expected, and have been really silly and enjoyable for everybody,” Pallone said.
Rodriguez said that while the event was geared toward communication students, it was open to everyone.
“It gets people out of their dorm, and then it also gives other students like me and Colby and Jaedynn a chance to kind of be on the other side and be the people who are running the event. So I think that helps with leadership skills as well,” Rodriguez said.
Senior marketing major Rebecca Myers said it was nice to mingle with other schools at UCA and form a strong community on campus.
McIntyre said, “It’s really fun, and that is really the goal. So something new, something exciting. And if we continue, this is a nerdy tradition, which I hope we do, then I can only see it getting bigger. But we really saw the potential of this event.”
