Word on the street: How do you feel about Halloween?
Halloween — a time of year as American as kickball and as wild as literally anything from Australia. Halloween and Halloweekend are major events at UNC, so staff writer Cy Neff asked students what they thought about this horrifyingly hallowed holiday.
Chris Reynoso
Junior communications major
“I think when I was younger, I don’t think I was as much into it … I think it was fun, I think I liked going out with my friends, I think I liked dressing up, but I think I wasn’t as, maybe, obsessed with it as I am when I come here and see people enjoy it. I think Halloween has changed a lot ... Now I think it’s an excuse to involve intoxication or the latter, whatever it is. I think it’s a good excuse to kind of go out and have fun. To wear what you want and do what you want.”
Zachery Colburn (right)
Junior political science and public policy
“Honestly, I feel like it’s another weekend. I’m over 21 so I can drink any weekend really. I get to dress up, so I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to dress up as so I’ve been throwing out the idea of Rick Sanchez from "Rick & Morty" … I think what I kind of get out of it is you see more older people celebrating Halloween a little bit more, and that’s definitely cool, in a way, cause it gets them to do other things other than just getting in trouble or whatever. Especially for teenagers, not so much us.”
Veronica Enierga
First-year environmental science major
“I don’t think Halloween’s a sign of the devil … My parents were, they still are, super religious, but they still let us go out on Halloween because they thought of it as more of a way to provide us with candy throughout the year instead of them having to buy it for is.”
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“I love Halloweekend. This is probably one of the most exciting weekends at UNC. Personally, I deliberately didn’t study abroad in the fall when I had the chance because I wanted to stay for Halloween … So far I don’t have a costume or actual plans … I like the fact that you can kind of wing it for Halloween. I can walk around different streets and meet people I’ve never seen before and spend the night in drunken revelry.”
Sumati Sridhar (left)
Junior statistics and analytics major
“It’s just a time of year to go crazy … There’s just a general consensus on campus that nothing productive happens this weekend. This is just a weekend to have fun and mutual, I don’t know, kind of cutting loose in a different kind of way. So it’s not like just like normal parties, it’s like, ‘Oh let’s all show our creativity through the costumes we’ve made …’ Through how we interpret different characters or whatever, I just think it’s really cool to see everybody’s creativity … I might be Waldo.”
Paloma Hansen (right)
First-year business administration major
“I would always dress up as a kid and my parents were really big on handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, they don’t really like the whole darker side of it, which I don’t either … Just when people take it actually seriously … When I was growing up, my neighbors like were very strange in that they believed in all the kind of paranormal factors of Halloween? And they were just very odd about it and so my parents were just kind of wary of that. And I think about that a lot.”
