It’s been a wild week at UMass Boston, as various Halloween parties and events have left the campus just as messy as it usually is.
“It’s been crazy,” said freshman Isaac Woods, “or I think it was, anyways: lots of trashcans are overflowing, cigarette butts are littered outside many side doors, there’s a bunch of trash around the picnic tables by the courtyard outside Healey, someone left a partially melted Bionicle figure in one of the urinals, the janitorial staff looks really tired and there’s a weird smell along the harbor. That’s all from Halloween parties, right?”
Halloween wasn’t just about the parties however, as many UMass Boston students seem just as excited as any child to celebrate costumes and candy. This past Thursday a whopping four students are reported to have come to campus in costume! Woods also noted that “last year one of my professors brought candy for his class on Halloween, but this year he didn’t.”
Another student, Riley Duden, commented on how scary UMass Boston has been this season: “I’ve been spooked all week, I mean, I’m always a little scared and discomforted by the campus, but I’m pretty sure this has been different. Lights have been flickering on the shuttle-buses, I’ve heard screams coming from the third floor of campus center, I was trapped in an elevator Wednesday, and two of my friends are depressed. … I also think that there must have been some haunted house or something set up in the Science Center, as everyone I see exiting the building seems to look totally freaked out.”
Sophomore Kelly Irving, who is living in the dorms for her second year, offered her perspective on how Halloween has been in the campus’s recently opened residential halls, stating “it’s been really crazy in the dorms this past week. Not as crazy as that time last spring when a student tried to make DMT in their room and an RA flushed toxic chemicals down the toilette and a hazmat teem was called and the administration didn’t even acknowledge that a student was taken to the hospital; but this week has been kind of fun, I guess.”
Interim Chancellor Katherine Newman issued a statement Friday Nov. 1 where she spoke to how excited she was to see students engaged on campus.
“This past week has been a victory for us against everyone who says our campus is ‘boring,’ ‘lame,’ ‘not a place for students to hang out,’ ‘a commuter school,’ ‘has a weird library,’ ‘just a plain ol’ university,’ ‘too underfunded to do anything cool,’ ‘Zoo-Mass, but the old kind of zoo where the animals are all kept in cages and don’t want to be there,’ or ‘bad.’ We now have definitive proof that the campus can be fun, if the form of various messes strewn about campus—assuming, of course, that the messes are left over from Halloween parties and not just our regular school environment.”