On Friday April 27, the First Annual Diversity Amazing Race is taking place here on campus. The event is being put on by the CO Corvallis Maker Fair, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, The Global Diversity Initiatives Program and the Student SACNAS Chapter and Spectrum. The organizations are collaborating with partners from OSU and the Corvallis community. The event is a fast paced race across campus where contestants will try to complete as many challenges as possible within the allotted time.

The event is inspired by the TV show “Amazing Race” and is open to anyone. There will be teams of up to five people, and accommodations can be made if certain participants need. Admission is free, you simply need to register your team online. The race itself runs from 12:00pm to 4:30pm, and food and drinks will be provided. For the race portion of the event, there are 12 stations, five of them are OSU cultural centers, mapped out for the teams to visit. At each station, each team will have a challenge to complete. Some challenges are physical, for example, completing a number of meters on a rowing machine between all members on the team. Some other challenges are more mental, like solving a problem or answering trivia questions. To make sure the event is inclusive, for each task, the difficulty can be raised or lowered to accommodate different abilities, skills, etc.

Susan Rowe and Jason Sarkozi-Forfinski are co-organizers of this event. Sarkozi-Forfinski is a Doctoral Candidate in Applied Anthropology and is the Secretary of Spectrum, which is a group for international/non-domestic LGBTQ+ students at OSU. Rowe is a Doctoral Candidate in Environmental Sciences and the Director of Networking and Advocacy for a new group on campus called “Voices of International Students,” which is supported by Global Diversity Initiatives. Rowe says that the point of the challenges throughout the race are to “have fun in small groups of friends or family and to learn about some of what makes OSU such an interesting and diverse place.”

After the race, from 4:30 to 5:30pm, there will be a closing ceremony where they will award the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners, along with some cultural presentations. During the event, each team that completes a minimum number of challenges will be entered to win prizes that will be given away at the ceremony.

The goal of this event according to Rowe is “for members of OSU and the Corvallis community to come together to celebrate diversity in a fun, inclusive, and accommodating way; that people get challenged to think about diversity, and that they get to visit some of our cultural centers and that they get to build new curiosities and relationships. We want to build allies in our lifelong commitment to learn and work to improve our competencies when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion.”

For more information, check out their Facebook page at OSU Diversity Amazing Race https://www.facebook.com/events/579675712402286/