Protests, candy, community service, and dancing may be ordinary parts of Guilford life, but how often do we get to throw costumes into the mix? Throughout Halloween week, students celebrated the spooky holiday and showed off their creative flair.
Project Community hosted the annual Halloween Festival on Thursday evening. The night of fun is held every year for the children at Project Community’s service sites, although all area children are welcome.
Several students participated in the Halloween Festival. They helped turn Shore hall and Mary Hobbs hall into haunted houses. They decorated with fake spider webs, strobe light skulls, and orange lights.
Others signed up to hand out candy from their rooms. The men’s basketball team helped set up, led a tag game, and gave out candy.
Over 80 children attended and enjoyed the pizza, games, candy, and other special activities.
Nine-year-old Abby Corcoran especially enjoyed the haunted houses and said they were “really scary.”
The children weren’t alone in their enjoyment of the event. Guilford students participated enthusiastically, and many of them wore costumes to greet the trick-or-treaters in.
Others acted as human props in the haunted houses, jumping out and screaming to scare the children who walked through.
Another festive campus-wide event took place on Friday night. Students came to the Coming Out Ball, sponsored by Pride, in their best underwear, cross-dress, and even just body paint and aluminum foil. They danced the night away, enjoying refreshments and all the daring outfits.
First-year Melissa Guilfoyle attended the ball as a drunken prom queen. Her favorite part was “seeing the guys in dresses.”
Guilfoyle wished there had been more room to dance and congregate at the ball.
“I wish it was held in a bigger place,” she said.
First-year Ima Paz, who also attended the ball, said she loved that “everyone was having a great time and nobody cared what anyone else looked like.”
On Saturday afternoon, several students attended the Get Loud March Against Bush in downtown Greensboro. The march involved people of all ages and from all walks of life from Greensboro – from children in strollers to senior citizens.
Protesters celebrated both Halloween and the upcoming election with creative costumes and signs. One said, “There is nothing scarier than Bush.”
The group marched the mile-long route through residential and business areas, ending outside the Mystic Karnival at the Center City Park with a drum cadence from the Greensboro Radical Drum Core.
Along the way, many supporters came out of their houses to wave or honked their car horns as the group marched by. Only two people holding “Bush, Cheney ’04” signs came out to oppose the demonstration.
The Mystic Karnival took place from 10 a.m. until midnight on Saturday. The flyers advertising the event described it as “A Halloween party of monstrous proportions.”
The Karnival featured two stages with bands, including Tommygun, Hellblinki Sextet, and Tetragrammaton, and gave away $500 in costume prizes.
Many students and staff members celebrated Halloween primarily on Saturday night by dressing up and attending the Student Union’s masquerade ball or other Halloween parties.
The campus was full of ghosts, goblins, and witches.
For some, getting costumes ready was just as much fun as actually wearing them.
First-year Catie Armstrong was a “survivor” for Halloween, and said that her favorite part of the holiday was “rolling around in the dirt” to complete her costume.
Grounds Technician Aaron Smock intended to spend the night handing out candy, but had only two trick-or-treaters come to his door: a chicken and G.I. Joe. “I ate most of the candy myself,” he said.
First-year Will Metcalf, sporting a red outfit and a tear painted on his cheek, celebrated Halloween as “the personification of love.”
Tim May, also a first-year, went with Metcalf as the personification of death in a black dress shirt, a white tie, white face paint, and an inverted cross on his forehead.
Metcalf, who spent the night at an off-campus party, said, “Halloween is my favorite holiday ever, probably because it’s in the fall, and everyone just goes crazy.