During Spring Quarter, the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center organized Scav Hunt at UChicago: Seeking Fun, Finding Tradition, an exhibition about the origins of this annual communal quirkfest.

On “list-release eve,” May 1, Scav’s founders—Chris Straus, LAB’84, AB’88, MD’92; Cassie Scharff Hallberg, AB’90; Diane Kelly, AB’90; Rick Jeffries, AB’90; and Nolan McCarty, AB’90 (via Zoom)—participated in a panel discussion held at the Reg.

Patti Gibbons, AB’94, head of collection management and co-organizer of the exhibit, served as moderator. The discussion has been edited and condensed.

Patti Gibbons: So I want to travel back to 1986. Chris, you had an idea.

Chris Straus: I was in Hitchcock-Snell—not Snell-Hitchcock, by the way. I thought, as a house activity, it would be fun to have a scavenger hunt. It got shot down miserably at the house meeting.

I kept thinking this really was a good idea. Maybe not just within one house, but house against house or student group against student group. We figured maybe we’d get seven or eight dorms. In that first year, we had 42 teams.

Patti Gibbons: How did the rest of you get involved?

Cassie Hallberg: I got dumped. I fell head over heels for a guy and got completely dumped. I thought, I better do something to pick myself back up. My RA knew Chris, and she made an announcement.

Diane Kelly: Cassie walks in my room and says, “Diane, we’re going to do a scavenger hunt.”

Rick Jeffries: I thought this was a bad idea. But I had a crush on Cassie Hallberg, who was exotic in two ways. She lived in the disgusting Pierce Tower, and she was from the Eastern time zone. I heard that Cassie was doing something and I could do it too. That was essentially my decision rule.

Cassie Hallberg: Thirty-eight years later, she finds out.

Nolan McCarty: Can confirm.

I was the last to join. I had a miserable first quarter. I didn’t do anything but study and sleep. I needed to do something else.

Patti Gibbons: How did the first list come about?

Chris Straus: We sat in the Reynolds Club and tried to make each other laugh.

Rick Jeffries: If you’ve ever seen 30 Rock, it’s like the writer’s room scenes. People making each other laugh, pitching stupid ideas.

It was always about trying to develop items that prompted involvement by the most diverse group possible. How could we get the nerds that lived in the library doing something, as well as those who wanted to get out and around Chicago?

Patti Gibbons: Scav has evolved over the years. But what feels the same?

Nolan McCarty: The willingness of students to not take themselves too seriously. I hate to say this—I love my students at Princeton [where McCarty is the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs]—but Princeton students don’t do things that will intentionally make themselves look silly. Scav encapsulates that aspect of UChicago culture.

Rick Jeffries: I was a misfit my whole childhood. I came here and fell in love with it.

The University is alive in this event. I’m so proud of what you guys [the students in the audience] have done to keep it alive, and I’m so grateful that nobody’s died.

Patti Gibbons: Scav has lasted 37 years and has spread around the globe. How does that feel?

Cassie Hallberg: I love how it’s evolved. I am so excited to see the list released tonight. I’m desperately going to try to stay up [until the midnight release time] because, at my age, that’s hard.

Diane Kelly: It’s fun to watch in a similar way that it’s fun to watch a baby grow up. My daughter [Emily Cambias], Class of 2018, sometimes refers to Scav as “Mom’s first baby.”

Rick Jeffries: I take absolutely no credit for the idea. I take very modest credit for the execution.

Nolan McCarty: If I ever need to break the ice or raise money, the easiest way is to say, “Hey, I was one of the founding members of the UChicago Scavenger Hunt.” Everybody recognizes that, and they’re like, “No way. That’s impossible.” And I say, “Yes, I did. Look on Wikipedia.”

See the online exhibit at lib.uchicago.edu/collex/exhibits/scav-hunt.