Get roped into USU’s new date night idea
Couples have been spotted walking around campus with their noses buried in a GPS tracking system, stopping at random places and doing wacky things.
The GPS date night, consisting of five to six couples, eight way-points, one GPS per couple and a huge campus, is a new program that the university ropes course is offering students.
The GPS date night costs $30, runs at different times throughout the week and is an interactive date.
The ropes course director, Patrick Bentley, said he wanted students to be able to date where communication was the main focus, instead of sitting at a movie not able to talk to each other.
Usually when students go on dates, they end up watching the adventures of someone else from their cushioned movie seats or less-than-comfortable couches.
“Why watch an adventure?” said Bentley. “Why not give them one?”
The GPS adventure begins at the Eccles Conference center, where each couple is presented with a pack. The pack contains two instruction cards, a digital camera, and a basic GPS. The facilitators then teach each couple how to use the GPS navigation system.
“It’s really simple,” Bentley explained. “They have to use three buttons maximum. Anyone can learn.”
Each couple pulls out the instruction cards inside their pack. One card has a set of eight way-points, or coordinates, and the other has a list of tasks that the couples must complete at each way-point.
Couples insert the coordinates into the GPS and the navigation system leads them to many different places on campus, where they have to perform the task that is on the card.
“One of your way points could be the kissing A, and the thing that the couples have to do there varies from card to card,” Bentley said.
“One could say, ‘Make an A, on the A’ and the other could say something fun like, ‘Use your imagination’. Either way it gets the couples talking to each other,” he said.
Scarlet Fronk, a senior majoring in English, said that being creative was the best part of the date.
“My favorite place was when my date and I ended up at the outdoor amphitheater. We had to act out a scene from a play on the stage and it was hilarious,” Fronk said.
Fronk said another outrageous thing she and her date did was posing for pictures with the statues.
“The Edith Bowen statue with all the kids around her was probably the best. We posed like the little kids. It was pretty hilarious,” she said.
At the end of the date, the last way-point for all the couples is the same, bringing everyone back together for what Bentley calls “debriefing.” The couples usually end up somewhere where they have a light snack – Aggie Ice Cream, for example – and Bentley collects the cameras and quickly loads each couple’s photos onto his laptop.
“While everyone is enjoying their snack, we watch a slideshow of everything that each couple did at the way-points,” Bentley said.
The actual USU ropes course closes down on Oct. 31, but Bentley said he is experimenting with the possibility of year-round, off-site date nights, the GPS date night included.
“This year will be the first year that we’re trying to stay open year round. I love it though because I get paid to play,” Bentley said.
Another one of Bentley’s new ideas is the thought of couples using tandem bikes on the GPS date to navigate around campus. He says it builds a better sense of team work.
“Guys need to learn how to surrender authority sometimes and realize that the women are just as capable,” he said.
The idea with the bikes is that one person controls the front half and steers in the right direction, while the other sits on the back half and uses the GPS. The combined effort gives the couples a sense of team work.
Fronk and her date were the guinea pigs for the tandem bike experiment.
“We were mostly testing for distance,” she said. “We had to ride all over campus, back and forth, but it was definitely worth it.”
Bentley said he feels this is an interesting, fun way to get acquainted with campus.
“There are still buildings I don’t know where they’re at and I’ve been here for a while. People will stop and ask me if I know where a building is and I won’t be able to tell them,” he said.
“The GPS date is great for freshmen to get more acquainted and familiar with campus.”
There are a total of 42 way-points across campus and each time couples go, they get a different set, so it’s always a new adventure.
Fronk said that it was like a scavenger hunt and she “would recommend this to anyone, even if you’re going on a date for the first time. It’s really a great chance to get to know someone.”
Check out the USU ropes course website to sign up or for more information.
–nikki.lives6@aggiemail.usu.edu