With arms linked, an array of characters lined Columbia Avenue last Friday night: Cowboys, Carmy Berzattos and Waldos in red and white striped tee shirts swapped compliments as they waited to enter this year’s 5C Halloween night event.
For many Claremont students, Halloween falls in the middle of midterms; It serves as a one-night break or a reward that follows from a sleepless week of studying.
This year, students looked to Scripps Associated Students (SAS) and Pomona Events Committee (PEC) with expectant eyes to deliver this perfect night. This Halloween, the cross-school collaboration brought a new life to the campus-wide tradition.
“This party was special because Scripps Halloween has become an institutionalized tradition, and we wanted to do it justice while also making it bigger and better than ever.” Evelyn Cantwell SC ’28 and Avni Kalia SC ’28, SAS 5C Event Co-chairs, said.
“After meeting with all of the other amazing event chairs across campuses, we decided that it would be the perfect opportunity to collaborate with Chris Hussey, [PO ’26, Associated Student of Pomona’s (ASPC) Commissioner of Campus Events], to bring back the spirit of a consortium and honor Harwood Halloween’s rich history while also reflecting the current traditions at Scripps,” said Cantwell and Kalia.
Although Halloween remains a steady tradition at the 5Cs, in terms of community and celebration the venues and host schools are always evolving. This excitement, shared amongst committee members, was tempered by caution and strategy.
After Halloween was shut down in 2022, certain students and administration held their breath in anticipation of the possibility of another shutdown or something else going awry.
This shutdown has come to be known by many as “January Scripps,” a nod to January 6th, 2021, when the Capitol was raided. In giving this day such an egregious name, the memory of 200 students busting down the metal barricades has endured in the collective mind of the student body.
To this day, students continue to speculate and dramatise stories about past Halloweens-gone-awry in Claremont. Many seniors who were in their first year during the 2022 event, such as Maren Fossum-Wernick SC ’26, explained that even for them it’s hard to differentiate between the real events of the shutdown and gossip that has since circulated.
“Rumors started spreading about the guards using fire extinguishers to remove people from the party grounds — I have no idea whether or not that’s true,” Fossum-Wernick said. “People were turned away and the line was really long. At some point, a group of people stormed the gate to get into the party, and that’s when they shut it down.”
“Rumors started spreading about the guards using fire extinguishers to remove people from the party grounds — I have no idea whether or not that’s true,” Fossum-Wernick said. “People were turned away and the line was really long. At some point, a group of people stormed the gate to get into the party, and that’s when they shut it down.”
As these stories become myths, they begin to overshadow the realities of event planning and the efforts of students to rebuild trust and reinstate a widely loved tradition. At the 5Cs, Halloween is not a free-for-all; it is a carefully planned event supported by the student government’s diligent students.
Rebecca Yao SC ’26, executive vice president of SAS, was also a first-year member of SAS at the time of the shutdown.
“The main difference between this and [my] freshmen year, when the whole fiasco happened, was that it was right after COVID, everyone was excited to go out, so that party was shut down obviously, very quickly,” Yao said. “There were maybe things we could have done to avoid that, but we also had a capacity limit. The lines were taking a really long time; they went literally down to CMC, people had fake printed wristbands and then [campus security] was really cracking down on that.”
For SAS, this event served as a catalyst for change. Now, they offer more wristbands and account for larger crowds. These changes have allowed them to develop better relationships with both school administration and the student body.
“After they did a very successful Baywatch [party], it seemed like they had a lot of trust between [SAS] and the administration,” Hussey said.
Yao also pointed out how SAS has made a conscious effort to present itself as the face of this party, rather than campus security, which helps in building trust with the wider student body.
“We are mostly there as students to be the ones checking wristbands, to be the ones letting students in,” Yao said. “[Campus security] is there for support genuinely because we don’t want them to be the bouncers and to be managing it. We want people to see a friendly face when they’re coming into the event.”
Yao expressed that students don’t always know what is going on behind the scenes and the work that event planning committees often do to build trust with the administration, so that students have the opportunity to attend parties such as this Halloween.
Students often don’t realize that while they are doing each other’s Halloween makeup or watching a scary movie before a night out, SAS and PEC are running around finalizing party plans.
“Probably four hours before the party, we were filling up those water jugs in that one water filler [in Seal Court],” August Kerley PO ’29, a PEC Member, said. “So that was really stressful. It’s very hectic behind the scenes and I almost feel like a lot of the time [people] are like, ‘who’s in charge of the party?’ [They think that] the party just kind of happens.”
For committee members who spent weeks troubleshooting and negotiating, stepping into the crowd felt like a sigh of relief. Months of planning revealed themselves through the smiles on students’ faces as Columbia Avenue erupted with music.
Laser beams slid across the sky above a sea of frat-flicks and bobbing heads. Behind the mosh pit, the water table offered a break from dancing, and students mingled around a table stacked high with Domino’s pizzas.
As heat radiated from the dance floor, warming the cool Californian night — class friends were reunited, strangers belted song lyrics and costume doubles found each other.
“I think if the music’s good, and the bodies are moving, and there are a lot of them, that’s really all you can ask for,” Hussey said. The night felt special for underclassmen, marking the beginning of new college traditions for Halloween. For upperclassmen, it felt like another return to the spirited night they love so much.
Collectively, Halloween stands as a rare pause in continual work, where midterms give way to togetherness and a sense of wider community across the 5Cs.
“To get to stand at the back of the crowd and just watch everyone sharing the joy — it feels so special,” Cantwell said. “Those are memories being made, and knowing I have a role in bringing people together to make them is beyond rewarding.”
Facebook Comments