Sadie Drucker SC ’27 has a thesis to write. Instead, she spent the weekend hunched over a sewing machine, crafting a fishing lure costume. The costume included a tutu, handmade in the makerspace, and a plain white T-shirt covered in strips of fabric until it looked something like a piñata. It also took hours, most of them borrowed from working on her thesis.
“I did spend a lot of hours that I should have been working on my thesis on my Halloween costume, but you know what? It’s okay,” Drucker said. “I’m proud of the result.”
For Drucker, a biology and data science major, the project was a chance to use a kind of creativity her coursework doesn’t usually ask for. But the instinct behind it — to pick a goal, research it, build it and finish it — is one plenty of 5C students know well.
At schools where students spend the week planning around problem sets, readings and deadlines, the weekend is oftentimes equally coordinated. Halloweekend gets the full treatment: costumes in rotation, group themes coordinated weeks out, wristbands claimed on a schedule and a group chat running the whole operation. This year, those plans came with a new layer of caution after a Friday night arrest on the Pomona College campus. For the rest of the weekend, students weighed the usual pursuit of fun against new questions about where it was safe to go, what to wear and how to get there. Some changed their plans; others went ahead, keeping a closer eye on their surroundings.
For many students, however, the Halloween planning process began weeks ago — as students dove into the annual costume selection process.
Jackson Fox PZ ’27 went as Legolas from “The Lord of the Rings” — not his main costume, but a backup. His friends have done a group costume for one night of Halloweekend since last year, he said, so he knew he’d need a secondary costume for the other night.
“I knew I would need another costume,” Fox said. “[The Legolas costume] looked really good quality and it was $30. Immediate purchase.”
Mira Hill PZ ’30 rotated through three costumes: Clark Kent, a vampire and a bedbug — the last of which consisted of her pajamas and an eye mask. Trisha Kakade PZ ’30 pulled off two group costumes in two cities: Josie and the Pussycats with friends on Friday, then Sabrina Carpenter from the “Taste” music video, alongside a friend dressed as Jenna Ortega, on Saturdayon a different college campus.
But planning doesn’t come easily to everyone. For Eve Garrity Jacobs PZ ’28, it’s the hardest part.
“I love Halloween. It’s my favorite holiday,” Garrity Jacobs said. “But every year I get really stressed out about planning a costume, and I never plan one in time.”
Once the costume is settled, there’s the matter of planning how to get through the door.
The Friday, Oct. 30 party at Scripps College was wristbanded. That usually means lining up early in a chaotic, competitive scramble for a limited number of bands, then showing them at security checkpoints at the door of the event.
Wristbands opened to Scripps students on Thursday, later opening to the wider 5C community. Kakade went with a friend when wristbanding began and found barely any line, a first for her. For past events, she said, wristbands had always run out before she got one. She credited her week of advanced planning.
Inside, the Scripps party was slow to start — “nothing was really happening until, like, 11:30, 12,” Kakade said. So her group did what a well-planned night allows: moving on. At the Scripps 709 House, the 5C student band Coast played to a crowd so packed that “you couldn’t even move,” she said. They enjoyed the show before returning to Scripps campus.
That same night, plans took a more serious turn. California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control agents arrested a 21-year-old Pomona student outside Clark V Residence Hall, leaving some students wary of how closely parties were being watched. By Saturday, the arrest had become another factor in students’ Halloween plans.
“After I heard about everything that happened with the police, that definitely scared me from going outside [on Halloween],” Kakade said. By the time she heard of the arrest, her group was already back in their dorms.
In an email to Pitzer College students ahead of the scheduled Halloween party, President of Pitzer College Student Senate Amirah Haque PZ ’27 warned of an increased police presence on and off campus.
“We have been told that the ABC and CPD will likely be present tonight (Halloween) across the consortium,” Haque said in the email. “ABC officers are not in uniform, but may have a “Police” vest, and are in unmarked vehicles.”
Haque cautioned students to stay off public sidewalks and streets, avoid carrying open containers of alcohol and refrain from dressing in law enforcement costumes. She also urged students to look out for one another across the consortium.
“I think I’ll definitely be a little more careful and on the lookout, but it’s not going to stop me from having fun,” Ramesh said.
Some students took that advice in stride. Shravan Ramesh PO ’30, dressed in a blood-splattered “American Psycho” costume borrowed from a friend, said the warnings would change how he went out, but not whether he did.
“I think I’ll definitely be a little more careful and on the lookout, but it’s not going to stop me from having fun,” Ramesh said.
According to Kakade, the email prompted reminders in her friends’ group chat to stay safe. Whenever she did go out after Friday, she said, she went with a big group and stayed on campus.
Hill said she felt a little maternal over her friends that night, so before they went out, she also gave them a reminder.
“It didn’t occur to me to not go out,” Hill said. “I just said, ‘Guys, please just be really careful.’”
At the Pitzer party, the new variable showed up in small moments. A few times the music cut out, Hill said, and people started asking whether the cops had arrived. Each time, it turned out to be staff pushing back the barricade. Otherwise, she said, she was “totally just in it with all the people dancing.”
It’s hard to look too ominous, though, when the students keeping an eye out for police include a fishing lure, a bedbug and a blood-splattered Patrick Bateman. For Fox, that absurdity is the point. His favorite thing about Halloween, he said, is how funny it is.
“Everything is inherently kind of funny, because costumes are just funny,” he said.
Garrity Jacobs, for her part, admitted she was skipping homework to be out on Saturday. The plan, as she described it, had two parts.
“It’s for the pursuit of fun,” she said. “And tomorrow I’ll do the work.”
At the 5Cs, even a night off comes with a checklist: costumes, wristbands, group chats and, this year, one eye out for the police. But when plans changed, students made it work anyway — even if that meant putting off some homework for a night of fun instead.
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