Students wild about Uno

A Braille Uno tournament was held in the Pine Lounge of the Student Activity Center on Oct. 20. Students with and without eyesight, as well as various patients from Central State Hospital, were present to take place in the festivities.

Uno is a card game which focuses on depleting all the cards from your hand one at a time, while having to match the color or number of the card before yours. It is a competitive game that tends to get participants really riled up.

The game can also turn dirty, when players use cards that skip turns, cause the next player to draw cards (thus lessening their chances of winning), or reverse the order of play.

The first person to empty their hand and shout the word “Uno” when they have only one card in their hand is declared the winner.

This tournament was part of No Boundaries Week, which the GIVE Center has hosted for the last two years to raise awareness in the community about disabilities.

The week focused on students and people with intellectual disablities, physical impairments such as blindness and deafness and other bodily disablities like missing limbs and paralysis.

In order to allow a more diverse group of people to participate, the cards that were provided had Braille written in the corner, which allowed students to play the game even if they couldn’t see the card in question.

Brian Spencer, a GC&SU junior who is blind, participated in the event.

By using the Braille on the cards and having people tell him the number and color of the card before his, Spencer was able to play the game as well as any of the students with perfect vision.

Spencer, who had just learned how to play the game that evening, won the first two games that he played.

“I won, surprisingly, but hey, it worked,” Spencer said.

Spencer, who understands and reads Braille, found the cards to be incredibly helpful.

“They’re perfect for me,” he said. “It’d be pretty rough if it only had print though.”

Other participants of the events had fun as well. Some were GC&SU students, and others were from Central State Hospital.

S.J. from Central State Hospital dealt the cards to the players at her table.

“I play a lot,” she said. “I’ve played since I was 12 years old, and I’m 20 now.”

Juli Langosch, a GC&SU freshman, said she was having a good time, even though she was running low on luck.

“This is my third [game], and I haven’t won one yet,” Langosch said.

Still, Langosch wasn’t about to give up.

“I’m about to win, don’t worry,” she said.

Kendall Stiles, director of the GIVE Center, hoped the event, and all of No Boundaries Week, would raise awareness in the community.

“What we’re hoping is that we’ve opened up some peoples eyes to what we can do,” Stiles said. “Hopefully they’ll start getting involved with some programs like Best Buddies or the No Boundaries Club.”

The other events in No Boundaries Week included a “beep ball” game, a wheelchair basketball game and disabled bowling.

The week culminated with a gathering on the front lawn on Friday night, where people with disabilities gathered and watched a puppet show and enjoyed music played by other people with disablities.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 4 2005. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry