On Wednesday, Sep. 25, the history department at the University of Connecticut held a tournament of the party game “Pictionary” between teams of history major students and faculty. The engagement effort was spearheaded by Heather Parker, academic advisor of the history department, who said that the reason behind this event was “to get history students to get to know each other.”
“I think socially there’s been a lot of pressure to choose a major that’s ‘practical’ which prevents students who would like to major in history to do so,” said Parker when asked why it was important for history majors to get to know each other. “At a campus that celebrates STEM, it’s good to have people from a smaller major to get to know each other.”
Entering the basement of Wood Hall, the history building at UConn, students and faculty alike were greeted by sentences on colored pieces of paper taped to one of the walls. Sentences included, “I RIDE OR DIE FOR STARBUCKS!! [sic.],” “DUNKIN’ FOREVER!! [sic.],” “SPEAK NOT OF THOSE TEAMS FROM ‘AWAY,’ WE HAVE THE SOX, THE CELTICS, THE BRUINS AND THE PATRIOTS!! [sic.]” and “TEAM OXFORD COMMA!! [sic.],” among other options relating to “Pictionary.” The sentences were supposed to be taken off the walls and represent the participants, ideally having them form groups based on the sentences they chose. This method of organization, however, did not last and participants began to arrange themselves however they wanted to form the teams.
The team members introduced themselves to each other and the other team they were sitting with. The tournament didn’t ever officially start; participants simply started playing.
“Pictionary” is a game where a designated illustrator has to draw a word or phrase from a card on a time limit without writing or saying anything that could give the word or phrase away. There are six different categories on each side of a double-sided card with varying prompts. Each category for prompts is correlated with a specific color. Teams are represented by plastic pencil tips as moving character pieces on a board with different colors on each space to determine which part of the card is drawn. Rolling the die is how the pieces represent the teams’ progress on the board, but the teams are only allowed to roll the die after they guess the drawings.
In one such session of “Pictionary,” both teams neglected the “all-play” rule, where on certain spaces both teams are allowed to draw simultaneously. Whoever wins gets control of their piece again and can progress on the board, making the game one-sided since the only way for the other team to progress is to have the drawing team expend the time dictated by the hourglass. After reviewing the rules, the game progressed more fairly.
The color green represents difficult phrases to guess. Both teams were stuck on green all-play spaces and they traded control of their unmoving pieces, never having a chance to roll the die for a while. The team with the monopoly on the die at first ended up winning twice, but the competition was fierce. Still, the teams had an underlying respect for each other and displayed good sportsmanship.
Many odd and confusing murals that would only make sense in the context of the game sessions were drawn on large sticky notes. To end the “tournament,” which had descended into run-on games, it was decided to have each team contribute their favorite mural to a display on the wall, allow everyone to guess the contents, and the team that guessed correctly would be awarded the Walter Childs Wood Excellence in Pictionary trophy.
A highlight was the “forbidden fruit,” which was very clearly signified by three large letter X’s, with an arrow pointing to assorted fruit and a stick person with their mouth open. That stick person was supposed to be Eve from the “Book of Genesis,” who is associated with the consumption of the forbidden fruit along with Adam.
According to Parker, Lincoln Hirn, a social media graduate assistant, had the idea to post the pictures from the history “Pictionary” tournament on the UConn History Instagram page and have the Instagram audience guess what the pictures were supposed to represent.
When asked why “Pictionary” was chosen as the game of choice for this event, Parker said, “If you can put pen to paper, you can play. It’s egalitarian, and because of time limits it’s a rowdy game.”