Laser tag phases onto campus

Campus Recreation and Housing and Residential Life jointly purchased a laser tag system to provide EWU students with more options for entertainment in Cheney.

“We’re trying to do something more nontraditional,” said Mike Campitelli, director of campus recreation programs. “We decided about six months ago to start laser tag.”

The laser tag course is set up every Friday and Saturday in the field house of the PHASE building. Games start at 7 p.m., and last about a half hour. Campitelli said that the field house was the perfect location due to its size and poor lighting.

The 15-minute set up of the course includes old baseball infield screens, poll vault pads and trash cans, which provide players with adequate cover. All these items are being reused from previous sports, and only a few tarps were additionally purchased.

The system cost about $26,000, according to Campitelli, who said, “it was paid for officially by the ASEWU funding … through campus rec.”

Students who live in the residential halls will pay a dollar to get in, while the rest of the EWU attendees will pay $2. “It’s a greatly reduced price from the downtown one,” said Campitelli, adding that “you don’t have to drive [to Spokane].”

The field house and system can be reserved in advance by contacting Campus Recreation at ewulasertag.com. This will open up opportunities for Greek life, clubs, organizations and athletic and academic groups to hold challenges, as well as be used for summer camps, Campitelli said.

Off campus groups, however, will not be able to reserve time since “the students bought it, the students will play it,” Campitelli said. Faculty and staff are welcomed as well, along with immediate family and occasional visitors of the EWU students.

Smoke machines will soon be added to the course to improve the “cool factor,” Campitelli said. Participants will be able to see the actual beams of light going across the field.

As of now, EWU has 30 vests available, and during games, four are always kept as backups. Half of them are red and half are blue, so team plays can be set up as well as independent games. “Next year, we might buy an extra 10, so we’ll have 40 all together,” Campitelli said.

There would typically be snow outdoors during winter quarter, so students would be stuck inside with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Laser tag is “just another activity for students to do” on those dreary snowy days, Campitelli said.

Laser tag will not be running during non-academic weeks or during the summer, unless an on-campus group requests otherwise, Campitelli said.

Intramurals using the field house during weekdays prevents laser tag from running every day. However, the first week of each quarter and the week before finals are unoccupied, and laser tag will run. The schedule by spring quarter may also change to include Saturdays and Sundays.

While laser tag wasn’t designed to dazzle and recruit more students, “it’ll keep the ones we have here with having something to do,” Campitelli said.