Halloween brings many opportunities to celebrate, especially on a college campus. College students can attend parties, carve pumpkins, visit friends off-campus, go trick-or-treating or stay in and watch scary movies.
At the University of Maryland, some students knew their general plans for Halloween in advance but were not entirely sure of all the details.
Senior computer science major Joy Roberts said she would be visiting her friend in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
“I don’t currently have a Halloween costume planned, but I do like to attend Halloween events with my friends,” Roberts said.
Eating a lot of candy is the main thing she does at parties. Roberts and her friends also play Halloween games and carve pumpkins. Her friend started a white elephant tradition. White elephant is a gift-giving game typically played around Christmastime, where each person contributes a wrapped gift to a pool of gifts. Players take turns taking gifts from the pool or stealing gifts from other players. Roberts’ friend tailored the white elephant tradition to Halloween.
“…The gifts are Halloween-themed stuff like merchandise for [The] Nightmare Before Christmas,” Roberts explained.
Nathan Wolfe, a freshman information systems major and a Business, Society and Entrepreneurship scholar, said what he was most looking forward to was visiting haunted houses with his friends for the first time.
“I’ve never been to one before. I might be like a total wuss, but we’ll see,” Wolfe said.
Wolfe was unsure if he would dress up. He figured he would likely go as something generic, such as a monster, or wear a simple face mask.
Michael Felder, another senior computer science major, was also not entirely sure what he would dress up as for Halloween.
“I’m undecided, but I might do Jeff the Land Shark from Marvel Rivals,” Felder said.
However, Felder was fairly certain he would attend a party hosted by a friend he met in class—it would take place in a dorm or apartment near campus. He additionally said he most looked forward to watching scary movies. Similar to Roberts, Felder has his own Halloween traditions at parties.
“I think for my traditions, we order pizza, then watch some scary movies as well as play some scary video games, like Outlast,” Felder said.
Overall, Halloween looked to be spooky and exciting for University of Maryland students.