Nerf guns are banned this year for the campus-wide game, Humans vs. Zombies. The game involves participants who have become zombies that “feed” on humans by tagging them. This turns the humans into zombies. However, humans can stun the zombies for 15 minutes by shooting them with a Nerf gun or throwing a pair of balled up socks.

Some students have opposed the use of Nerf guns, feeling that it is disrespectful in light of the April 2007 school shooting at Virginia Tech. Whitman has adopted the no Nerf guns policy this semester. Numbers of participants have dropped as a result.

“On the surface, it seems like a good argument, but if you look a centimeter deeper, it’s clear that the people making these statements know nothing about Zombies,” said sophomore participant Taylor Hubbard. “The game is based on Zombie movies, not actual violence, and I feel like they are using these events as an emotional clutches because they don’t like or understand the game.”

“They are making a mockery of Virginia Tech by comparing it to a Nerf gun fight,” junior Alex Henke wrote in an e-mail. “Unless they’re claiming the zombies somehow represent the victims of Virginia Tech, I don’t see a resemblance. The real zombies here are the people who are too stupid to distinguish a brightly-colored hiding game from an actual massacre joke.”

Zombies coordinator and senior Patrick Herman felt the change may have been desired.

“A friend who goes to Goucher College, whose game ended around the time of Virginia Tech, as it did here, told me there were protests against Zombies because of the Nerf guns. This was the first time the game had been opposed at all. I feel like people may have been just as upset if we had left them in,” said Herman.