Students rush to complete their OUPD Poker Chip Challenge collections

Since the Ohio University Police Department started the Poker Chip Challenge in early September, students have been rushing to collect them all. Three students have now acquired all 27 chips.

The first student to collect all the chips was freshman Quentin Kurtz. He completed his collection on Sep. 25 and received a complimentary display case as a reward.

However, he said that collecting them all was not easy.

“Some officers have tight schedules, so those officers are really hard to find,” Kurtz said. “For one officer, I went looking for two hours to find his car.”

He said that he and his friends saw this as an adventure.

“At this time we were still playing Pokémon Go, so we thought of it like a real-life version of that,” he said. 

Finding all the poker chips was not always a simple task, sometimes requiring Kurtz to do some rather adventurous things.

“I chased a police car around Nelson in my socks and Crocs running after him saying, ‘I need this poker chip,’” said Kurtz.

Since he finished his collection two more students have gone to collect all 27 chips and redeem them for a display case.

“The display case is fine. For me I wanted to get on their Twitter page and honestly I had a blast trying to find them all,” he said. 

OUPD’s goal with the Poker Chip Challenge is to get students to meet officers on campus. In an interview last month with The New Political, OUPD’s public information officer, Lt. Tim Ryan said:

"The goal is to give community members a chance to interact with us and get to know us on a personal level.”

Kurtz said he felt like the challenge met its goal. 

"One hundred and ten percent,” he said. “(The officers) are all really nice people. I love them all.”

For students who wish to take on the Poker Chip Challenge themselves, they can go up to any OUPD officer, or to their headquarters in Scott Quad, and ask for some chips.

Officers will be handing chips out as long as supplies last, and according to their Twitter page, they have plenty more display cases for anyone who collects the full set.