Honors College hosts first murder mystery dinner

For the first time, the Harding University Honors College is hosting a murder mystery dinner on Nov. 14 at the Honors House.
Frustrated by existing murder mystery options, senior Matthew Emlaw, vice president of the honors council, decided to create his own. He wanted to design his own murder mystery kit to create a challenging and fun night for friends.
“I was involved in several murder mystery [games] in high school,” Emlaw said. “We bought the kits, and I was disappointed with some of them — the way it was designed, I felt like it was impossible to solve or too easy, and so I wanted to create my own. I had thrown around this idea for a while, but this semester we decided to make it happen.”
Freshman Josh Milnes is on the planning committee for the event. He said the committee, comprised of about five students, meets every Sunday from 2-4 p.m.
“We have worked extensively on characters and plot lines to make this experience as fun as possible and as interesting as possible,” Milnes said. “We’ve also thrown in a couple of jokes that we think will just make the whole night more fun.”
Emlaw said all students are encouraged to sign up and participate in this seasonal event.
“We weren’t sure how many people were going to be interested, so when we first released it, we wanted to give honors students first dibs,” Emlaw said. “Now it is open to the public, and anyone is welcome to sign up. We are trying to get a few more people to sign up to fill all of the slots we have designed and planned for.”
Milner wanted students to know that even if they may be shy or have no prior acting experience, they should still participate in this event.
“You don’t have to be a good actor to participate, you don’t really have to be very outgoing at all,” Milner said. “We will have instructions for everyone, and it will just be a fun group of about 30 or so people trying to figure out a ‘murder.’”
According to Debbie Baird, Honors College administrator, the first 39 students who sign up and pay the $5 fee to the Honors House will be selected to participate.
“100% of the fee money collected will be given to a charity selected by the participants on the night of the event,” Baird said.
Sign-ups close today. Anyone interested can sign up at the Honors House on Center Avenue.