Spooky in Santa Fe

By Cameron Hines

“It’s not the costume,” says freshman Adams Kornblum, “It’s how you wear it.” Adams was the Swan Queen in this Saturday’s costume contest, doing a ballet routine towards the judges that a prima would envy. The crowd ate it up. As we cheered every pas de bourree, I imagined this must be what Big Football University students feel on game day. He was cheated– so I think– out of winning a Dunkin Doughnuts gift card because a judge pointed out that it was “a costume contest, not a dance contest.”

The top finalists? A fabulous Alice and Wonderland group costume and the main characters of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. No one knew who they were supposed to be, but their cigarette holders, bucket hats, Hawaiian shirts, and wild antics on the catwalk secured them a victory.

As well as the Saturday night party in the Great Hall, the Student Activities Center, the Johnnie Community Board, and the Health and Wellness Committee put on a pumpkin carving contest in the coffee shop on Halloween proper, with bookstore credits for the winners and pumpkin pie and apple cider for everyone else. Later, there was a double feature screening of Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness in the Great Hall for campy horror fans.

Student Activities Center director Mary Anne Burke, dressed for the day as the woman from Alfred Hitchcock’s the Birds, complete with a fake crow in her hair, loves Halloween. “It brings back really good memories of childhood for me,” she says. She wanted to make sure we were getting those same good childhood memories in the midst of all of our paper-writing stress.

I love Halloween. It’s my birthday, and my friend bought me a cake. I brought it to my math class, and my tutor ate half of it. I was glad, as it gave me more room for candy and celebratory green-chili at my birthday dinner downtown at the Shed.

I wore my Arthur— the classic childhood-cartoon aardvark– DIY ears and glasses to meet with my mentee at a local elementary school. He was dressed up from the killer from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He’s eight. I’m twenty one. When I asked him if he liked my costume, he poked a finger through my fake glasses and asked me where the lenses were.