Every year, three of Prin’s houses host Halloween events to encourage students to celebrate the American holiday and come together as a campus.
The three Halloween events, Howard’s Transylvania Treats, Anderson’s Haunted House, and Buck’s Field of Screams, are hosted within a week of one another in late October to early November. Students and staff say that these events are beneficial to the Prin community.
“One of the biggest objectives to me is that we want to experience community,” said Tina Hussey, Howard’s RC. Hussey said that the main objective of these events is to help with student engagement on Prin’s campus.
Hussey also said that some changes were made to Howard’s Transylvania Treats event this year to increase student attendance as well as house participation.
“Last year there wasn’t as much engagement prior to the event with the house being able to include people with what they could do to be involved in it,” Hussey said, “So this semester, my experience has been that we’ve made great progress…What I appreciated about Transylvania Treats this year is that there was a sense of community…it was a great opportunity to come together and celebrate…This year the event was outside which made a huge difference in getting people to come.”
Howard President Olivia Scott also shared her perspective on what Howard had to do to make this year’s Transylvania Treats better for the campus.
“We really wanted to reimagine what it meant,” Scott said, “as well as keep some of the aspects that were particularly successful last year…The idea this year was to create a fall festival type of thing…A lot of it was inspiration that our house board came up with…this ultimately made for a really house-involved event. I think that when you get people who can be invested in something and see that their own desires are being made into concrete ideas, they’re more willing to participate.”
Buck President Dexter Quade Mbwinja said that things also looked different this year for Buck when putting on their event, Field of Screams.
“Last year, there were problems with people in the house participating in the event,” Mbwinja said, “However this year, there are a lot more people in the house, and the closing down in Lowrey contributed to that, so it’s way better in the house now, and lots of planning has been done to make this event successful.”
Mbwinja shared that as an international student from Zimbabwe, he appreciates the Halloween events although he was not introduced to the holiday before coming to Prin.
“Personally, I like them, but it is a different culture,” Mbwinja said, “Some internationals may not have so positive opinions about Halloween in general, but someone open-minded coming from a different culture can have fun.”
Former Anderson President Ruth Hummell said that Halloween is the only time of the year when multiple events are happening in the houses.
“I’m a big Halloween person,” Hummell said, “and it’s super fun to have a lot of celebrations going on around a similar time frame. It’s pretty much the only holiday on campus where we celebrate lots of events like this at the same time.”
Freshman Madeleine Waters said that, as a new student at Prin, the Halloween events are a good way to get people involved.
“I would say that it’s really nice,” Waters said, “because at Prin, we always have something to do every weekend. Especially having festive events, are really important and a good way to bring the campus together.”
