Katie Parks is an avid zombie fan. Her favorite undead film is Shaun of the Dead and one day hopes to one day play a Lego Zombies video game (sounds great to me). When her student group, the Lutheran Campus Ministry of the University of Southern California, sought ideas for a fundraiser, she came up with a unique idea: the Zombie Run 2012!

Can you tell me a little bit about the Zombie Run 2012?
– “It’s a one-and-a-half mile run/walk through the campus of the University of Southern California and we’re doing it as a fundraiser for one of the student groups there, which is the Lutheran Campus Ministry.”

How did the student group get involved with the race?
– “The Lutheran Campus Ministry needed a fundraiser, and I’m actually on the board — the governing body for the ministry, itself. I always wanted to do a zombie run, but every time I tried to sign up for one of the commercial ones, it doesn’t ever work out, for scheduling reasons. I figured, why not combine the liking for zombies with a need for a fundraiser, and do one ourselves?”

How does the registration process work?
– “People can sign up as survivors or as zombies. Survivors can run, walk, sashay… whatever they want, through the course. We’re going to be letting them go in small groups of about 10 people at a time, so the zombies don’t get overwhelmed with people coming through. The survivors will be given two flag-football-style ribbons, and as they go past the zombies, the zombies will be trying to take their flags. At the end of the race, for anybody who has a flag, those can be turned in for raffle tickets, and we’ll be raffling off prizes. The zombies can get flags, by taking them from survivors. The survivors get flags (at the start of the race) and try to stay away from the zombies.”

What kind of prizes are in store for the raffle winners?
– “We’ll mostly be doing gift certificates, because that works out better with USC’s policy, as far as fundraising on campus goes. We’re looking at gift certificates for Southwest Airlines, Amazon, Starbucks and more.”

What’s the expected attendance of the race?
– “We’ll max out at 250 people because that was the amount I could do without having to get a Fire Code permit.”

Will the USC campus streets be blocked off for this event?
– “No. As much as possible, the course is not on any active streets throughout the campus. There’s a couple of small streets that we’ll be crossing over, but if there happen to be cars on them, we’ll have people out there to make sure they don’t bother the people involved with the Zombie Run. It’s a Sunday afternoon, so USC’s campus is pretty quiet at that time of day. The department of public safety officers have been notified that we’ll be out there, so they won’t arrest people walking around with blood on them… because that would be a bummer.”


Can you describe the course layout?
– “The course is pretty cool. We’re basically running through all of the big areas on USC’s campus. So, it goes by the Tommy Trojan statue a couple of times, it’ll go through McCarthy quad, two big libraries during the middle of the afternoon. There’s usually plenty of students out there, who live in the dorms, I think we’ll get a lot of interest from students who may or may not know it was happening, once they see zombies wandering through campus, in the middle of the day.”

Should the runners expect to go through any sort of obstacles in this race?
– “Not at this time. Next year, if we can. Some of the things we’d like to add are obstacles of some sort, doing it at night, and hopefully not doing it on the campus. It might be easier to do it somewhere else. We’re looking into different ways to set the whole thing up, next year.”

Do you currently have an excess number of zombies or runners?
– “There is a set number of people to be playing zombies. It’s actually pretty close, for how many zombies we can take for the race, in order to have a good ratio of zombies to survivors. We want to have fewer zombies than survivors, at this point. We’re going to have a little bit of makeup, at the starting line, to help people who don’t have their own, but I’m expecting the After-Halloween sales to help people out with fake blood, zombie makeup. They can even zombify their Halloween costumes.”

Do you have any Hollywood coming in to assist with the runner’s makeup?
– “We’ve got a lot of people from the USC theater school who are interested in helping us out with that.”


Where will the proceeds of the race go?
– “Normally, Lutheran Campus Ministry is supported by the national and local Lutheran churches, but with the economy the way it’s been the last few years, people aren’t making as much money; to begin with, but they’re not giving as much money, either. There’s been a lot of pressure on the campus group — raising their own funds for salaries and programming, such as Bible studies, worship retreats and service pojects at least once a month. This is the first attempt at that.”

Event: Zombie Run (but it’s really a run/walk/shamble)
Location: on the campus of the University of Southern California
Date/Time: Sunday, November 4, starting at 2 pm
Length: 1.5 miles
Admission Price: Survivors ($10/students, $20/everyone else) and Zombies ($15/students, $25/everyone else)
Prizes: There will be raffle prizes at the end of the event, including gift certificates to Starbucks, Amazon, and Southwest Airlines.

For More Info:
– Zombie Run main website: http://www-scf.usc.edu/~lutheran/zombie_run
– Facebook invite: https://www.facebook.com/events/467033609995904/
– Lutheran Campus Ministry: http://www-scf.usc.edu/~lutheran/
– Email for more details: zombierunlcm@gmail.com