Hundreds of University of Georgia journalism students participated in a flash mob at Herty Field on Wednesday.
Professor Scott Schemp, director of the university’s New Media Institute, coordinated the event, which he called “organized chaos.”
“The university has an obesity initiative, and in my course I was trying to come up with a way to teach people how to make more responsible and healthy decisions when it comes to their… exercise and lifestyle,” Shamp said.
Champ also wanted to emphasize the importance of media.
Using Twitter, Shamp sent 250 students in his media class a message at 2 p.m. to meet for a workout. The flash mob took place just 30 minutes later at Herty Field, where students were directed by fitness instructors from Workout Warriors LLC.
“I found that a lot of my students had never participated in an organized … fitness class,” Champ said. “I thought this was a way to combine a university initiative and the use of media.
“The state of Georgia is one of the most obese states in the United States. It’s a devastating epidemic, so I decided to try to use our diverse resources at Grady to bring everything together.”
And the Twitter status idea worked.
At 2 p.m., hundreds of students showed up at Herty Field to work out and bring attention to the obesity epidemic.
The students, led by Workout Warriors founder April Williams, came ready to dance in appropriate attire and with plenty of water.
The group warmed up before following Williams’ lead in a dance routine. They then performed some running exercises before briefly building muscle on ledges around the field.
Third-year Marie Martinez, like many others, was participating in the flash mob for the first time.
“We have a big group project we’re working on, so this… ties in with that; getting healthy and finding new ways… to motivate people to work out,” Martinez said.
While some students seemed excited to have participated in their first flash mob, not all students who participated shared that feeling.
Katie Sloan said she was not excited about the whole thing at all. She went because it was compulsory for the class. And Connor Land felt that the event was mostly a promotional event.
“The New Media Institute, which this course belongs to, really knows how to use their students as gerbils for PR promotion,” Land said. “[It’s] … part of the process … part of the machine to promote the New Media Institute.”
While Land believes the project as a whole was aimed at promoting the institute, he also believes it was used to promote health in general.
Brittany Logins, a senior fellow at the institute, believes the flash mob will help draw attention to the problem of obesity.
“I’m sure it will make people aware of how much physical activity they are doing,” she said.