Come down to Goodwyn 110 on Oct. 28 to take part in a thrilling murder mystery event hosted by AUMnibus and NAMLE.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (Oct. 20, 2026)— AUM is celebrating Media Literacy Week this year, with a variety of events and film showings during the final week of October, but the one that has us most excited is “Media Literacy Murder Mystery” sponsored by The AUMnibus.
On Wednesday, Oct. 28 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., AUMnibus will welcome students to step into the role of an investigator in Goodwyn Hall room 110 to help solve the mysterious murder of Deborah Body.
One of the students behind the event, political science senior Mark Redden, explained the vision for it by saying, “Participants will be able to engage their critical thinking skills, partly to solve the mystery of who killed Deb Body, but also to exercise their ability to recognize well-sourced information from poorly-sourced information.”
Redden went on to describe what inspired his class to run this event by saying, “We simply had to do something for Media Literacy Week, and given that it was on the week of Halloween it had to fit the spooky spirit, too. I could think of no better way to merge the concept of information awareness and the Halloween vibe than by putting students into the shoes of an investigator solving a spooky case like this.”
In addition to The AUMnibus’s sponsorship, the event was planned and will be put on entirely by students in Professor Katherine Irwin’s Media Writing Dynamics class and is performed in conjunction with the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) to celebrate Media Literacy Week in the U.S.
U.S. Media Literacy Week was established in 2015 by NAMLE and is hosted every year at various campuses across the country. Its stated goal is to act as a weeklong recognition of the importance of and to cultivate a strong appreciation for media literacy.
This goal is certainly a noble one, as several studies, including a 2022 study from Medialiteracynow.org show that less than 40% of people were taught how to analyze media messaging in high school. This is compounded by other reports, including a 2017 publication from Harvard Business School, that shows that anti-intellectual sentiment is also on the rise, nationally.
NAMLE and AUM students are fighting back against the death of media literacy with events like their Media Literacy Murder Mystery, so come to campus on Oct. 26-30 to help keep this tradition alive.
