Despite a major transportation mishap, about 20 children from the D.C. metro area came to AU to celebrate Halloween with Letts Hall resident assistants and student volunteers.
The three-hour event was held in the Letts Game and Recreation Center and nine different lounges throughout the building. Each lounge served as a different station, where the children could earn prizes for participating in different events.
Housing and Dining Programs and the Community Service Center co-sponsored the celebration, which invited children from the D.C. Reads tutoring and mentorship program and family members of Office of Campus Life employees and Aramark workers, said Becca Krichinsky, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences who helped organize the event.
She described the event as a "good, clean, safe, fun Halloween event" that was a collaborative effort between the Residence Hall Association, resident assistants from the South Side residence halls, members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and community service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega.
Dressed in a full-length "Super Banana" costume, Krichinsky said she wanted to involve all of South Side in the event because she remembered the annual event as "not being the best." She said she tried to get all of the resident assistants actively involved by having them dress as superheroes or super-villains.
Krichinsky said that there were supposed to be about 50 children in attendance, but a complication with transportation meant that more than half of the children were unable to attend. According to Krichinsky, the bus driver said there were no children at the pickup sites, and the children at the sites and their chaperones said the bus didn't come.
Aside from problems with the bus, all activities "went flawlessly," Krichinsky said. She said the event was an improvement over the previous year when only four children attended.
Letts Resident Assistant Storme Gray said last year's event was better. Gray, a senior in CAS, said about 15 to 20 children came to her floor last year because she ran out of candy. She also said the Aramark workers on her floor brought their children and grandchildren to the event.
Gray said she was not impressed with the number of children who came to her floor and that there was confusion over the ages of the children visiting. Some floors had tailored their events for specific age groups.
"We thought it would be a lot of third and fourth graders," she said. "A lot of kids who came by looked like they were in fifth, sixth, seventh grade."
Despite the complications this year, Gray said she was impressed with the efforts of those involved, especially her residents.
"Everybody worked hard," she said. "Everybody put in a lot of effort."
Gray suggested the hall convert the Game and Recreation Center into one big haunted house and hold all events there next year. Making the event campus-wide would involve up to 74 or 76 resident assistants and would guarantee a better turnout among volunteers, she said.
"I think it would have worked better if it was a campus-wide event held in Letts, as opposed to a Letts event open to all of campus," she said.
Krichinsky said she hopes to eventually turn the celebration into a day long, campus-wide event. She also wants to ensure that transportation issues are worked out so more children can come.
Krichinksy said events like this are important, especially at AU, where the emphasis is placed on the phrase, "Ideas into Action, Action into Service." It is important to show this commitment to service by reaching out to the greater D.C. community, she said.
"I think it's really good, because these kids get to experience Halloween in a brand new way," said Anna Blake, a freshman in CAS who hosted a "haunted house," where the children could crawl through a maze-like tunnel and get scared by volunteers dressed in costumes on Letts 4-North.
