Virtual Bingo and Minecraft Graduation: During the Pandemic, College Students Recreate Campus Life at Home – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Armed with food and drinks, bingo cards and daubers, about 100 Hanover College students pack the student-activities center on the second Tuesday of every month. At the tight-knit, 1,100-student college in southeastern Indiana, bingo is so popular that latecomers have to sit on the floor.
Students chat intermittently and sing along to music as the numbers are called, playing for small prizes like Amazon gift cards.
When Hanover moved classes online for the rest of the semester amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Theresa Hitchcock, associate director of student life, wanted to find a way to replicate the bingo experience. She polled students to gauge their interest. When dozens said yes, she mailed them each a pack of 10 bingo cards.
Then, on the last Tuesday of March, 75 students and a handful of faculty and staff members packed the gallery view on Zoom for five bingo rounds.
Instead of socializing around tables, participants were alone in their homes. But they were joking around and yelling “Bingo!” as they normally would. Hitchcock was the DJ for the night, haphazardly streaming Spotify from a separate laptop and taking requests from the audience via Zoom chat. The whole event cost about $300.