The living dead came out to play and scare those who dared enter the Zombie Fest maze.

ASCC put together a Zombie Maze on Thursday Oct. 27 filled with about 13 students disguised as zombies.

This year student government wanted Zombie Fest to have more student engagement.

The event was set out to accomplish that goal by having the zombies be students and having the Cosmetology Department and Cosmetology Club design and apply all of the zombie’s make up.

Alan Rodriguez, Inter-Club council commissioner, said, “In years past we’ve used someone else but this year [ASCC] wanted to do it more for the students and have student engagement.”

Rodriguez is a civil engineer and architect major, his knowledge of building played a role in deciding how to make the maze.

He said, “My major is obviously building and we knew this was the best way and the most interactive way we can have [it].

“Building it out of wooden slabs was going to take a long time, and then last year there was a wind of gust that tore off half of the maze so [ASCC government] didn’t want that this year, that’s why we got the inflatable [maze].”

There were two other significant differences between last year’s Zombie Fest and this year’s.

One was the location; the maze moved from Falcon Square to the back of the Student Center Building.

The change in location made it harder for students on campus to notice the event was going on but the larger open area made the use of a larger maze possible.

The second change was having the Cosmetology Department and Club be in charge of the design for the zombie make up and do the actual application of the face painting.

Cosmetology major Ricardo Gonzalez helped plan, coordinate and execute the zombie face paint.

He said, “It took a week and a half, our thought process on everything, getting together with ASCC, planning it all, but really getting it together was a solid week of stress.”

He said the hardest part of the event was communication and keeping everyone involved in the event informed about times and places to meet and the products needed for the zombie make-up.

According to Gonzalez there were at most 25 zombies and the application varied from 30 to 45 minutes per person with groups of two to three people working on them.

Cosmetology major Tiffany Mark agreed that it was a stressful week of “Money crunching, arguments, making decisions. Our whole department is volunteering among our department there’s at least 10 [zombies] and all of our class has some make-up on.”

Areal Hughes, Zombie Fest committee member, said, “It took a lot of time and preparation, Rodriguez and his team of [Zombie Fest committee] members, as well as Amna Jara and Cynthia Chavez really helped out to put this together, but really this was [Rodriguez’] baby pretty much.”

The three months that Rodriguez and his committee spent planning the event were well spent according to Hughes, “You can see fruits of the labor it’s going really successfully people are scared. They don’t even want to go through […] it just started but I believe we’ve had more than 15 or 20 people come through and that’s really good because we just opened.”

She also explained that a liability waver had to signed to get in the maze.

Once inside the maze it consisted of two inflatable mazes put together, the first part had walls with see through netting, which allowed zombies to see and scare participants.

The second part did not have netting making the space inside the maze more constricted.

A second set of walls allowed zombies to hide and jump out as participants were passing by.

Film major Luis Marquez said, “I thought it was pretty creepy, they were hiding in the yellow walls.

“One of the zombies scared me earlier.”

The zombie was theater major Dempsey Garcia, who stayed inside the maze scaring students for the entire hour and 30 minutes that the maze was up and open for students.

Once students reached the end of the maze they got a stamp on their hand which entitled them to a free t-shirt, with the year’s zombie logo on it.

The logo took English major Antonio Guajardo one month to design.

“Getting everything approved, getting rejected, designing something new, getting rejected again. It was fun but getting the graphics approved was the hardest part.”

Despite the difficulty of getting his logo approved he said, “I would do it again, it was a fun time I got to meet new people who work in ASCC and it was a good experience.”

Guajardo is already thinking about next year’s Zombie Fest, he said, “I could have done something different but it’s already there so there’s next year.”

Undecided major Giovany Mercado gave Zombie Fest his approval he said, “It was pretty cool I liked it.”

Mercado is also thinking about next year’s Zombie Fest, he said, “ I feel it should be a little later on [in the day] and having some props would be better, not just people.”