Submitted by Vanessa Smith, Resident Assistant, University of Windsor
I used these as my first door tag, with the floor theme “Making Headlines” at the beginning of the year. They were a big hit. I could hear parents reading the stories aloud and the entire family’s laughter echoing down the hallways. I’m still in love with this idea, which I have to credit my Dad for, as he came up with it on a long car trip one day.
The door tags were written like tabloid new stories- a large, ridiculous headline; a grainy black-and-white photograph; and a story related to the headline. I made four different templates- “Black Hole Discovered in Mac Hall Laundry Room”, “Bigfoot Spotted at the Thirsty Scholar”, “UFO Sighted Out Mac 7 Window”, and “Term Paper Spontaneously Combusts!” I wrote the wild stories, including false quotations from made-up experts, and inserted students’ names and other pertinent information (program, hometown, age- whatever’s allowed at your university) in a slightly larger font within the story. The pages were printed out on gray paper and taped to the students’ doors for when they arrived on campus.