On Friday, 11 October 2024, we conducted our very first monthly gathering of the semester. Following the spooky Halloween theme of the month, we made our very first monthly gathering an unsolved case scavenger hunt titled “Unsolved Case: The Kidnapping Case of The Missing UNPAR Students”.
This unsolved case revolved around Aurel and Yuda, current and former IO interns respectively. The premise was that they had found treasure at UNPAR and their secret was discovered by one of the IO staff. They disappeared around I-Day where Yuda was kidnapped and Aurel was presumed to have run away to find her abducted brother. Until the day of the monthly gathering, Aurel came back and asked our ‘IO Detectives’—the international students—to find the perpetrator that kidnapped her brother.
The participants that were then dubbed the ‘IO Detectives’ consisted of all international programs at UNPAR, specifically BIPA, ACICIS, Bilateral, and of course KNB. With diverse students from different corners of the world, such as Australia, UK, Timor Leste, Rwanda, Sweden, and Lithuania, we kickstarted our event by introducing them to a traditional Indonesian lunch from Pringgodani which consisted of rice, Kalasan fried chicken, krecek, sambal, and kremesan.
After lunch, we divided the detectives into 3 groups which are named Yellow, White, and Red as well as gave them their missions. The detectives had 3 missions to collect the points they needed to win. The first mission was to find who kidnapped the student, the second was to find Aurel, and the third was to find the treasure.
The case files consisted of articles, suspect profile and transcripts, crossword puzzles, witness photos and a police summary that they had to look over together. The 3 groups expertly read through all of the documents and solved the puzzles and found out where the witnesses were hiding. After finding out, they quickly made their way to the location of the witnesses.
Witness A was at Taman FISIP. She waited around the famous big tree at FISIP UNPAR. When the groups came, they had to do a challenge where they had to make 3 words about UNPAR in the game of scrabbles.
Witness B was at Klinik Pratama. There, the groups of detectives were given the ‘Magic Newspaper’ challenge. This challenge required them to think of a strategy on how to fit everyone inside the newspaper. They had to do 3 levels where in each level, the newspaper was folded in two, thus making the challenge harder and harder.
Witness C was at the field on the 3rd floor of the PPAG2 building. She waited with an interesting challenge consisting of a bottle and a rubber band tied with 4 strings. When the detectives arrived, she asked them to move the plastic bottle from one side to the next using the rubber band.
Witness D was waiting at the International Office where she prepared a table hockey challenge with a twist. The team that arrived could only attempt to pass the puck to the opponent’s side if they managed to answer three trivia questions correctly.
At the end, all the groups passed all of the challenges with flying colors and in return, they got clues to find where Aurel was hiding, the treasure, and of course who the kidnapper was. The groups managed to find Aurel and she gave the final clue on who the kidnapper really is as well as the key to find the treasure.
After finding Aurel, all 3 groups raced to find the treasure and find out who the suspect was. At the end, the Yellow group managed to find the treasure first as well as revealing who the perpetrator was. The other groups followed suit not long after.
We ended our spooky monthly gathering with the announcement of winners and their prizes as well as a few warm words from our participants. The detectives celebrated afterwards by sharing snacks and teh botol, leaving the room with their hearts full.
