Halloween On Campus
By Theresa Whitfield
Campus Ministry hosted over 1000 members of the Brookland and Catholic University communities for its eleventh annual celebration of Halloween on Campus. This event took place on Wednesday night on the second and third levels of the Pryzbyla Center.
About 450 families filled every floor of the Pryzbyla Center with powerful superheroes, beautiful princesses, vicious beasts, fantastical creatures, and everything in between. On the top floor in the Great Rooms, various clubs and sports teams set up tables with games and prizes. On the lower level in the food court, families sat down and enjoyed a slice of Little Caesar’s pizza.
Costumes varied across time periods and genres, both fictional and non fictional. Some of Catholic’s professors took advantage of the opportunity to bring their favorite scholars from the past to life under one roof. English professors Dr. Gibbons and Dr. Murton dressed their children as William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer, respectively. In no other circumstance other than Halloween could these two visionaries be seen side by side, being bribed to pose for a picture.
Every club and sports team made their table or station unique. The Biology club displayed various forms of bacteria made of candy and dyed gelatin in petri dishes. Those who stopped at the table had to identify each one in order to earn a treat. The Busch School of Business made spooky word searches and gave stickers and other small items as prizes. The cross country team offered potato sack races for those who wanted to compete to win a prize.
Halloween on Campus is a huge community building event for Catholic’s professors and their families, as well as the families living in the Brookland neighborhood. It is a free event where families can dress up to trick or treat on campus and have a meal together. It also gives the students of Catholic University a chance to interact with their professors outside of the classroom and meet members of the Brookland community.
Brookland Outreach, a branch of Campus Ministry, has been planning this event with graduate assistants for service for the last six to seven weeks, according to John Harrison, a member of the planning committee.
Historically, this event is held outside, and trick or treating takes place throughout Centennial Village. However, due to the rain, the event was moved to inside the Pryzbyla Center.
Even though plans changed, the student organizations and volunteers were “adaptable and ready to help,” Harrison said.
“My favorite part of the potato sack races was seeing the smiles on the kids faces afterwards,” said Thomas Macyko, a sophomore on the cross country team.
The Knights of Columbus station grabbed the attention of any child with a passion for sword fighting. Two members dressed as medieval knights allowed anyone with enough courage to step into the arena and face them in a duel one-on-one. The knights, Thomas Dompkowski and Mark Tonglet, were both very excited to volunteer. They both thought the idea was very clever.
This event exemplified Campus Ministry’s goal for Catholic University’s community to serve others and gave the setting for “friends to become family,” as stated on the Campus Ministry’s website. Halloween on Campus is one of the rare opportunities where students across campus can bring what they are passionate about directly to the community. Participating organizations certainly took advantage of the opportunity they were given to share their message and mission.
“The best part for me was getting to individually talk with some of the kids and parents,” Harrison said. “These individual conversations really helped me remember the true purpose for all of the hard work and planning.”
