They are only acquainted with a gated courtyard. How to unlock the rest of campus?

At the extracurricular bazaar at the Schwarzmann Center,

five students encounter WORD: Performance Poetry.

That day, they unlock an extra tendril of campus.

After two audition processes and a ring of fire, the five students mysteriously receive the gift of a new piece in the Yale jigsaw puzzle:

New site unlocked.

It's a scavenger hunt!

The five freshmen stumble in the dark pool of unknown space towards the first clue:

They run into momentary detours...

But they reach the second clue.

and the third...

and...

the fourth.

At the Woolsey statue’s golden foot, they find a clue that takes them to the tendril that started it all...

The freshmen have just managed to form a mental map of campus, based on their scavenger hunt route.

But at Beinecke, they are suddenly blindfolded, spun around, and steered in unknown directions.

So the mental map scrambles into incoherence, as if in a blender.

They are led to a car

And now campus becomes a series of lurches, mapped by the scrawl of erratic driving.

After forever,

the freshmen are led out in a haze of ghost sounds and mysterious music into a room in Phelps Hall.

Alongside an oath, the freshmen are also sworn to the scrambled tap-night map,

deviating from the designated campus layout.

Over the year, the freshmen keep writing “This is my voice!” The puzzle pieces grow...

and grow.....

A year and a half later, after four performances of “this is my voice!” poems, campus now belongs to us — Adiyah, Claire, Faven, and me.

A year has passed since WORD tap night, and the puzzle pieces are now locking back into place.

If you were to ask us now, our map of Yale probably looks a little more like the standard layout, but it is still littered with the territorial claims made by our voices.

WORD unlocked the first few puzzle pieces of this new place.

Since then....

our friendships and performances…

have filled in the gaps between.