Halloween in the halls is an annual tradition here at Millikin in which the different residence halls decorate their floors, and children from the area come to trick-or-treat.

This event is hosted by the Student Housing Council (SHC) every year since, according to Director of Residence Life Paul Lidy.

“This event has been going on for many years at Millikin…at least 15 years” Lidy said.

This year, SHC put on the event with some help from other organizations on campus including Alpha Phi Omega (APO) – the service fraternity on campus – as well as the music organization Phi Mu Alpha (PMA) – the music based fraternity here on campus.

The groups of children then went and toured the dorms in different groups around the halls. When they were not trick-or-treating in the dorms or were waiting for their groups turn to go, the children were allowed to stay in lower RTUC where they could participate in such activities such as arts and crafts which we hosted by APO and PMA. Children were also able to go pumpkin bowling, which was hosted by the Millikin Student Senate. In addition, members from Millikin’s very own Bronze Man Books provided coloring pages to keep the children occupied while waiting for the tours.

Over the course of the event, there were a total of three tour groups; a scary tour, a non-scary tour and a new tour called a Nerf tour.

The scary tour is almost how it sounds; when they are touring the campus it’s meant to have a scary tone to it with typical Halloween decorations to a larger extent.

The non-scary tour isn’t supposed to be scary and is supposed to be a normal tour of Millikin’s dorms with more basic decorations and not anything that is over the top.

The Nerf tour was a new one that SHC introduced this year. This new tour takes place in Weck Hall and during the tour the kids were given a chance to fight off hordes of zombies using Nerf guns to defend themselves. And eventually Captain America was supposed to show up and save them towards the end of the tour.

When asked how SHC came up with the idea for this new tour, SHC member Maddie Gulla said, “The residents of Weck Hall enjoy having Nerf fights in their spare time so we thought it would be a good way to incorporate that fact into this event, and this was the best way we could think of.”

This event wasn’t only for the children, it was also for the different members of the residence halls.

According to SHC member Joshua Parker, “On each floor of every hall, the residents were given the chance to decorate their floor for the tours, and there will also be a contest held by SHC to see which floor was the best and the winning floor gets a pizza party on their floor as a prize for having the ‘best floor’.”

Hopefully next year’s Halloween in the Halls is as successful as this one.