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Program Possibility: Mystery Murder

Submitted by Sara A. Crowe, Area Coordinator, Area Coordinator, Residential Enrollment, West Liberty State College

The hall director has been murdered by one of their RAs and it is up to the residences to figure out who is the murderer and how they did it. Each RA is given a motive to why they would want to kill the hall director. The residents gather in the lobby area and are read the scenario. Ours read something like this

“It was a typical evening in Hughes Hall when Andrew Lewis came over to meet his friend, Hall Director Sara Crowe, to work on a project. Much like he always does Andrew entered the building and knocked on Sara’s door. After Sara did not answer he keyed into her apartment thinking she did not hear her knock to find Sara lying face down on the floor. He turned her over and tried to perform CPR but it was too late. Andrew called Campus Police and Sara was pronounced dead. “

As I played dead on my apartment floor, Andrew and Campus Police acted out the scene to make it more enjoyable for the residents. Props that complimented the RA motives were lying around the body. Then the narrator gave instructions to the residents that they had to interview each RA whom was sitting in their room with a snack to give residences while they told their motive and allowed the residents to ask questions. At the end of each RA’s story, each said “but I took care of that”. Residents were allowed to work together in teams no larger than four to solve the mystery. Once they had interviewed the RAs they brought their hypothesis back down to the lobby and gave it to the narrator. After one hour had passed all the residents met back down in the lobby to discover who had killed the Hall Director and the winner(s) were given a set of movie tickets to a local theatre.

Just for fun Campus Police was also present in the lobby area to do finger printing for any resident interested. Other prizes for the program that were discussed were tickets to a local haunted house, as the program was held in October.

Sample Motives

  • Making a RA pick up extra duty nights for being late to a meeting
  • Hall Director telling a RA she needed to spend more time in the building and less with her boyfriend
  • Hall Director telling a RA he/she needed to spend more time on campus
  • Hall Director telling a RA that he/she needed to be a better role model
  • Hall Director constantly picking on an RA for being old
  • Hall Director telling a RA she was fat

Coming up with the motives was probably the best part of the planning stage; motives will have to be catered specifically for each staff. The residents really seemed to enjoy the program; some of them even carried around a notebook taking notes to help them solve the mystery. We advertised for the program by using each RA’s bulletin board area by saying that there would be a murder but not giving away whom was the victim until the night of the program.