Students at Drake University excited for Halloween shared some of their favorite ways to celebrate this spooktacular holiday.
“I love Halloween,” said Tanner Pollock, a junior majoring in marketing and management. “It’s the best holiday of the year, not going to lie.”
Pollock said he loves this holiday because people get to dress up in costumes, spend time with friends, go to parties and, of course, get free candy.
“I’ve been mustard before, I think I was a shark freshman year,” Pollock said as he recounted some of his favorite past costumes. “I was a cowboy last year.”
Avery Luepker, a senior majoring in music education, said he plans on dressing up as one of the characters from Disney Channel’s well-known TV show “Kim Possible.”
“I’m going to Madison [for Halloween] because my sister lives there,” Luepker said. “We’re going as Kim Possible and Ron. We talked about doing Sharpay and Ryan, but she doesn’t have good Sharpay vibes.”
In addition to planning out his costume, Luepker said he and his family went to a pumpkin patch and carved pumpkins over fall break.
“I like the pumpkins, and the jack o lanterns, and pumpkin patches” Luepker said. “I think they’re so fun.”
Anely Jimenez, a fellow pumpkin-lover majoring in anthropology and religion, said that she likes to take a different approach when decorating pumpkins.
“I might paint pumpkins this year,” Jimenez said. “I like to paint them better than carve them.”
Cindy Ojeda, a senior majoring in anthropology and sociology, said she painted pumpkins with her sorority, a group that has so much Halloween spirit they decided to start celebrating at the beginning of October.
“At my sorority we’ve been watching a scary movie every day,” Ojeda said. “I ended up watching ‘Saw’ for my very first time, and I actually liked it. We also watched ‘It’ together and that was good.”
Luepker said that he’s been watching scary movies as well, such as his all-time favorite “Halloween.”
“I just like being scared,” Luepker said.
Jas Kakar, a sophomore majoring in AI and data analytics, said his favorite scary movie is the “Conjuring” series.
Besides watching movies, Ojeda said her sorority also plans on going to an apple orchard together, which is something sophomore Noah Ellenberg liked to do as a kid.
“I was a fall kid. My birthday’s on the 14th of October, so everything fall I’ve always loved,” Ellenberg said. “My personal favorite was going to the apple orchard and picking apples when I was a little kid.”
Something Ellenberg did this year to celebrate was attend the Halloween Hoops event for charity.
“So, you go and shoot hoops for charity, basically, and it’s just a lot of fun,” he said. “A lot of people come, and you know, sometimes there’s a rivalry that happens.”
Another campus activity students participated in was the Nightmare in Olmstead event hosted by the Student Activities Board on Tuesday, Oct. 26.
“It was really fun,” Luepker said. “I rode the mechanical bull, and they had a little haunted tunnel in the basement, which was actually really good, not going to lie. They got me good a few times.”
He said the event was made even better with performances by the Drake improv group, D+, and the all-male a cappella group, the Brocal Chords.
