Competitors taped to walls during Duct Tape competition

Student engineers work together to keep their teammates sticking to the wall of the McArthur Engineering building for the Duct Tape Competition held Tuesday afternoon. Shreya Chidarala // Staff Photographer
Student engineers work together to keep their teammates sticking to the wall of the McArthur Engineering building for the Duct Tape Competition held Tuesday afternoon. Shreya Chidarala // Staff Photographer
Student engineers work together to keep their teammates sticking to the wall of the McArthur Engineering building for the Duct Tape Competition held Tuesday afternoon. Shreya Chidarala // Staff Photographer

After a lengthy absence, the Duct Tape stick-up competition returned to Engineering Week, as students once again taped each other to a wall Tuesday afternoon.

The objective of the competition was to tape a teammate to a wall for the longest amount of time, with a timer starting once the teammate was hanging above the ground while taped to the wall. The team whose member stayed up the longest would be declared the winner. In the event of a tie, the team that used the least amount of tape would have won, but that wasn’t necessary this year.

Tomas Cacicedo, a senior studying industrial engineering and coordinator of the event, said it’s been about five years since the last Duct Tape competition.

“It’s fun to bring it back. I’m sure it was a tradition at one point, so I hope they continue this from now on,” Cacicedo said.

Four teams competed: two engineering teams and two who represented student organizations. The engineering teams were both part of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BES), while the other two teams were from the Association of Commuter Students (ACS) and the Asian American Student Association (AASA).

The first team to finish taping their person to the wall was ACS. Alexandra Garcia, a sophomore studying health science, volunteered to be taped up to the wall. Johnny Portuondo, a junior majoring in accounting and a member of the ACS team, made it clear that non-engineering students had a chance to win.

“Accounting for the win,” Portuondo shouted after they finished. Garcia remained on the wall for two minutes.

“Thank you all for trying,” Garcia told her team. They were defeated, but still had fun.

The Biomedical Engineering Society teams finished in first and third. The first-place team featured Stacie Arechavala, a senior studying biomedical engineering, who was taped to the wall for 25 minutes.

“I’m going to die,” Arechavala shouted several times as she hung from the wall.

Coming in second with 16 minutes on the wall was AASA, who also had the least amount of tape. The third-place team – the other BES team – was the last one hanging on the wall, but the competition ended at 3 p.m. and they ran out of time.

Since the winning team was an engineering team, they earned points for Engineering Week. At the end of the week, the engineering team with the most points gets $100 toward their organization.

The Duct Tape competition had attendees laughing and enjoying the competition despite the small turnout. There was even a fifth unofficial team that competed just for fun. Cacicedo said he was excited to see if this competition returns for next year’s Engineering Week.