Master hypnotist Tom DeLuca puts students in a trance
By Gray Chapman
SCAD celebrated the first day of fall quarter by inviting professional hypnotist Tom DeLuca to the Hub for a special presentation. Students gathered around the Hub as they watched their peers fall under the hypnotist’s spell, performing antics from dancing to martial arts. DeLuca, who has a master’s degree in psychology, is an award-winning campus entertainer who has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, the New York Post, People and Elle, as well as appearing on television shows like Good Morning America and Dateline.
About 15 students volunteered to be hypnotized by DeLuca, who then put them in a trance-like state and ordered them to perform certain tasks. The audience watched as Reginald Whitehead, a second-year
interactive design and game development major, thought he was SCAD’s number one cheerleader who just couldn’t remember the SCAD mascot (“Pigs! Donkeys! Goats!”). Meanwhile, second-year broadcast design student Mike Cooke competed in a national Shake Your Body contest.
After putting the volunteers through everything from a body-building contest to a terrifying rabid badger loose in the Hub, DeLuca was able to wake the students up. Many of them remembered nothing that had
happened. “I was in another world,” said Whitehead, minutes after he had been awakened. “It was really
relaxing. He just started talking, and then snapping, and the next thing I knew, I was completely gone.” Though Whitehead performed cheers (and a flip) onstage, he couldn’t recall anything that had happened.
The students’ antics attracted a large crowd in the Hub, which grew as the event progressed. Second-
year photography major Sean Wright, who recently transferred to SCAD, expressed his enthusiasm for the performance. “I thought it was great seeing the people I’ve just met acting like that onstage,” said Wright. DeLuca himself said he enjoyed the event too. “It was a great night, with a great crowd,” said DeLuca, who had performed at SCAD-Savannah the previous night. “It’s a lot of fun when you have people who get really into it.”