Vampires Invade Campus Center

Cinderella’s coach may have turned into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight, but by 9:15 p.m. Friday Pocahontas had turned into a cleaning lady and a football player had clearly been morphed into a janitor.

An estimated crowd of 80-100 people turned out for the ASUCC Halloween Festival which was held at the Campus Center on Friday, Oct. 29. Activities were scheduled to run from 5 to 10 p.m., but by 9 p.m. the final prizes for silliest costume had been handed out, the pie eating grand champion was wondering how she would keep all that pie down and the final scary movie of the evening was showing on the big screen in the lounge.

“Nobody left here empty handed,” said Lucia Vander Veldon who said the event offered too many contests to keep count of the winners.

Veldon began to extol the list of the evening’s contests. Since most events offered competition for at least four age groups and honored first, second and third place winners in each age group, it was no surprise that the evening’s organizers focused more on giving away gifts and ensuring that everyone had a good time rather than keeping score. Lucia continued to explain the prize awarding policy. “We just made sure that everybody got stuff.”

Haley Wolcott, a freshman by day and the anime “Hetalia” character Korea by night, was declared the first place winner in the pie eating contest after devouring the competition in the qualifying round. She declared tonight was her “first food eating contest ever.” Does she have a future in food competitions? She replied, “It depends… maybe just a little pie.” This was quickly followed by “I’m so glad this pie is staying down.”

The purple-people-eater, aka UCC student Barbara Summerhill, thought that the pumpkin carving was probably her favorite activity of the evening. Barbara and her friends were on their way to another party in Myrtle Creek. This seemed to be a theme for the evening. Festival organizers said that many people came to the UCC event and ate, played some games and were on their way to another party. People with children often stayed longer because of the family friendly atmosphere which organizers deliberately cultivated.

Movies all day long in the lounge, spaghetti, pizza, sheet cake, soda, popcorn, cookies, a coin toss game, a mummy wrapping contest and trophies, gift cards and goody bags galore. The UCC Campus Center was certainly the place to be Friday.

The Mainstream is a student publication of Umpqua Community College.