It really is. Hope is not well-known for its parties (except for Club Durf); in fact, because Hope is a Christian college and enforces certain policies, we make it clear enough that parties with alcoholic drinks and drugs are not condoned on campus. While some students chose to satisfy their college party needs away from campus, those of us who stayed decided to make the best of it. Truth be told, it was one of the best Halloweens I’ve ever had.
To get into the Halloween spirit earlier in the afternoon, I bought some spiderweb cotton, a singing, animated ghost decoration activated by sound (not a good idea in a lively dorm now that I think about it), and used these adorable pumpkin stickers my parents sent me to decorate my door. It’s a small detail, but having people smile or compliment my door as they go up and down the stairwell gives a normal day a little Halloween cheer.
The first event of the night was Nykerk. A group of friends and I made our way to the DeVos Fieldhouse in the light drizzle after having dinner at Phelps. You can also read about it in this or this blog post, but it’s a Hope tradition, a theatric competition between freshman and sophomore women that consists of a play, a song, and an oration. There wasn’t a dull moment; I was either engrossed in the performance, belly laughing, or trying not to cry.
After it ended, my friends and I headed back to Scott Hall and donned our evening wear, both well-planned costumes and impromptu costumes that evolved throughout the two hours of preparations. Gradually, six, seven, eight people joined in on the fun, each adding to the contagious laughter, weirdness, and energy that permeated throughout the hall right outside my door. I had bought a tiger onesie at Target the other day, but overnight turned into Tony the Moraler, a cereal mascot inspired by Nykerk/the Pull who would say, “You’re grrrrreat!” to the closest passerby.
There wasn’t a single person who dressed up as a black cat, and that alone made my night.
We sang Happy Birthday to our RA in our Halloween costumes and took a group picture in the Piano Room.
Then, we did what was the only thing acceptable at midnight: we went on a donut run. Because it was late and we weren’t sure who in the neighborhood was giving out candy besides President Knapp, we walked into Good Time and gave the owner a hearty “Trick or Treat!”
The rest of the night was quite slow but talking about haunted houses in Chicago and California, ordering pizza, testing our morals through a round of Cards Against Humanity, singing Disney songs, and reading a viral short story called “The Egg” by Andy Weir made the night more memorable, and much better than what I had originally planned which was watching overplayed Halloween movies in our pajamas.