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Students were asked to decide “whodunit” at a murder mystery dinner event sponsored by the Gorilla Activities Board.
The event was hosted on Oct. 26 at the Bicknell Center starting at 6 p.m.
“The murder mystery dinner party is basically a murder mystery,” said Cale Chapman, junior in communication and GAB president. “Students come and they get food, it’s all free, they have a full meal with dessert, an entree with drinks, and while they do it they get to meet other people, mingle and solve a mystery that is being acted out by a troop of professional actors.”
The event was free for PSU students. Students could enjoy a variety of food options ranging from chicken alfredo, Italian salad, baked cavatelli, and breadsticks, to ‘bloody’ red velvet cupcakes and a blood moon punch mocktail.
“We brought in a company called ‘Dinner Detective’ and Sodexo is provided our food,” said Kailan Cloud, junior in psychology and GAB creative events chair. “Basically everyone is a suspect, we enjoy a great meal and then try to figure 0ut who killed people.”
Although the company “Dinner Detective” has been brought before to PSU, this was the first time an event like this has been done by GAB.
“We knew it was going to be right before Halloween, but we already had another event that was Halloween-related, so we decided to do something along those lines but make it really fun,” Cloud said. “This is something I’ve always wanted to do and it seemed to fit the time.”
The suspects of the crime were randomly chosen GAB members, none of the members from GAB knew who a suspect before the show began.
Although the actors that were brought in were professional actors, the same actors interacted with the audience by pulling them in and ‘interrogating them.’ One of the people ‘interrogated’ was a freshman in biology, Noah Sherwood.
“It was pretty shocking,” Sherwood said. “She pulled me out and I thought it was a one-time thing, but then it happened again and I had to guess I was just a part of (the show) then.”
Some students enjoyed the large amount of people that attended the event.
“A lot of people come out for GAB events, but I think this one is especially fun,” said junior in English Khadija Ceesay. “A lot of people haven’t been able to do (an event like) this before, so a lot of people came out.”
GAB found “Dinner Detective” through an agency they work with at the National Association of Campus Activities (NACA) conference.
“This semester specifically we were looking for some fun interactive ways to bring people together in one space. So we thought this would hit the nail right on the head pretty much,” Chapman said. “Everybody has been mingling together and meeting a lot of new people and really breaking the ice. So I think our programming goals this semester, really satisfied a lot of what we wanted to do.”
For those interested in joining GAB or learning about upcoming events, more information can be found on Gorilla Engage.