It feels like the epitome of Fall walking around campus this time of year. There are colorful leaves strewn across the lawns and cobblestone walkways. All of the trees and changing colors. It's a little bit cloudy and a little bit chilly, but there hasn't been too much rain yet so it's the perfect sweater weather. Most importantly though there are Halloween decorations all over campus. People have carved pumpkins and placed them outside almost all of the dorms. They look very picturesque lined up on the steps leading up to the main entrance for Manzanita where I live. A number of the different departments have also put up cute little decorations all over. My favorite thing though is that someone on my dorm floor decided to cut ghosts out of some notebook paper and they went around and put the ghosts on every door with people's names on them. Everyone's in the spirit and it's fun.
Campus Activities Board has also put on all kinds of activities for Halloween. Friday night there was a Halloween Silent Disco. If you've never been to a silent disco, it's when everyone is provided with headphones, and the same music plays for everyone, but as soon as you take the headphones off it's quiet and you can have a normal volume conversation. It's super fun when you have the headphones on and you're dancing with your friends. But it's almost more fun when you take your headphones off and you get to watch everyone dancing to nothing and singing loudly without music. They played Thriller for Halloween, and some fun remixed star wars soundtrack, and then at one point they played bohemian rhapsody and everyone got really really into it, singing at the top of our lungs. I also enjoyed when they played the cupid shuffle. It felt a little like a high school dance except everyone was just there to have fun and there was less social pressure. CAB also put on some other events like pumpkin carving in Templeton. And other clubs have also put together events for the weekend around Halloween. The Spanish club had a big salsa dance party Saturday night, and the Queer Student Union put on a super fun Halloween themed drag show. I think everyone I know had something about it on their snapchats. And finally, the theater department is putting on Sweeny Todd in November and everyone I've talked to is excited about seeing it soon.
There's also some fun off-campus events too. Last Friday night my friends and I went to go see the midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show off campus at the Clinton Street Theater. It wasn't too far from campus and we all just split two Lyfts to get there. It was a really cool and funky old theater. They played the movie through the projector and then had a stage to perform on. We had such a fun time. They sold prop bags for the show to throw rice and toast and toilet paper around for the show. They also had really delicious popcorn with real butter and honestly, I would go back to the theater just for that. The performance was really really good. It was really interactive and most of us going were rocky horror "virgins" so we went through the light hazing for that together. It didn't get over until almost 3 am and I was very exhausted and ready for bed by then, but it was definitely worth it to go. It's been fun to enjoy all the on-campus events and go to some off campus as well this weekend.Now I have to work on putting together my costume for Wednesday to wear around campus for the day. I've got a shiny looking orange jacket, and an orange hat, and I'm going to cut some letters out of black paper and go as a "road work ahead" sign. I think all of my friends and most students will appreciate the vine reference but I know my professors will be pretty confused. Either way I know Wednesday will be a fun day on campus.
If you have any questions or just want to talk about Lewis & Clark you can email me at quentingaul@lclark.edu