“Dead Week” took on a whole new meaning Tuesday.

Spawned from English professor Patti White’s Apocalypse in Literature class, students with bloody makeup and torn clothes slouched their way to the library from four different directions on the Quad to listen to a zombie manifesto and declare their rights as law-abiding zombies.

As a class assignment, White required each student to participate in the walk.

“Zombies are an important part of popular culture right now, appearing in all sorts of venues – from political advertising to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website to charity marathons,” White said. “This makes sense to me, because zombies serve as a sort of generalized form of the Other, the embodiment of our deepest fears, whether those be of scarcity of resources, the threat of an outbreak or invasion or the deadening of our humanity. Zombies help us negotiate our concerns.”

The walk was originally influenced by the theme of the class, in which students read different books over the course of the semester about the apocalypse and different scenarios in which it would be brought about, White said.

“To end the semester with a zombie walk seemed like a good way to bring all of our discussions about the apocalypse – both as literary strategy and as cultural metaphor – full circle, since we started by reading ‘World War Z’ over the summer,” she said.

In a way, the zombie walk served as a last celebration of the students’ hard work of the semester. Sohaila Nikoufar, a senior majoring in international studies and English, said the “celebration” involved meeting before the walk to help each other with makeup and organize the zombies.

“We looked into ‘zombie physiology,’ and we now know an awful lot more than we probably should about zombies, so we felt the need to use and share that knowledge in some form or fashion,” Nikoufar said. “I am helping with makeup, and we’re just trying to create a look of sickness and decay; since it’s Dead Week and cold season, a lot of us already look like that, but we also have some stage blood.”

Although they looked the part, the student-zombies had to follow rules like regular students.

They were not allowed to carry any weapon-like props, disturb classes or trample unsuspecting flower beds.

Phillip Spotswood, a senior majoring in English, explained what the zombies were to do and how they were encouraged to act.

“UA authorities were pretty big about us not touching anyone, and we lurch. Both for practical reasons and tactics. I think everyone would get pretty tired of seeing us running around for an hour – plus we would get tired too,” Spotswood said. “In my opinion, slow zombies are the scariest. You can really get into the idea of zombie as a dead corpse when you’re stumbling around slowly.”

Beginning the makeup process at Morgan Hall, students gathered together and smudged their makeup and ripped up old clothes until they got their zombie look just right.

Different groups went through various buildings such as Alston and Rowand Johnson Halls and attempted to alarm onlookers around the Ferguson Center Plaza and the Quad.

Rebecca Hails, a nursing major who witnessed the zombie march, said the participants seemed fairly realistic.

“I’m scared, and they all have a creepy zombie walk going on – it’s that little slide along they’re doing,” Hails said. “The zombies do seem friendly, and the sound effects and costumes definitely add to the character; I saw one of my friends who was a zombie earlier and that was a little creepy.”

Stumbling, hissing and moaning about toward Gorgas, the zombies slowly gathered at the steps to read their Zombie Manifesto, or Zombie Bill of Rights. The zombies listed their demands, such as better meat processing, better tasting humans and rights to no taxation without respiration.

The zombies then retired and returned to their human state.

Dodson Seitz, an advertising major, who was invited to join the group by a friend in White’s class, said he enjoyed getting a reaction from students on campus.

“I’m not part of the class, I was just invited with a bunch of friends. It sounded like a lot of fun, and I loved getting dressed up and walking around campus,” Seitz said. “I think my favorite reaction was I actually did get a girl to scream – she was kind of walking close to me, and I ran and kind of hissed, and she ran around the corner screaming.”