suppliedPoint: Express Yourself with Spandex
Self-expression is not something you see candidly on campus very often. Not that I blame anyone for that — it’s terrifying to put yourself out there. But there is one time of the year where you’re allowed to strut around campus looking like a zombie with no fear of persecution—and I’m not talking about finals week.
Halloween is a license for self-expression, and you should bring that self-expression to campus. At best it will be a social catalyst, and at worst you’ll freeze to death because you’re walking from Tory to SUB in a spandex Spider-Man costume.
The possibility of death notwithstanding, you have two ways to see Halloween: as a holiday where you can justify eating loads of candy and dressing up as someone or something that makes you feel awesome, or as a Tuesday. Which perspective you choose to bring to campus is up to you, but personally, I have had more than enough Tuesdays already.
If it is ostracization that you’re afraid of, there’s an answer to that too: wear a mask! Then you can go from being a figurative faceless husk of a student to a literal one. And if things do go poorly, you can always gossip with your friends the week after about that one audacious freak who dressed up for Halloween when nobody else did, and they will have no way of knowing that it was you the whole time.
You should take Halloween as an opportunity to get yourself out there. I won’t lie to you and say there’ll be zero judgement (I never heard the end of it after I came as a sexy giraffe one year), but who cares? It’s Halloween. Dress up, have fun, and bring that fun to campus.
— Aidan Herron
Counterpoint: Eat Some Candy Instead
There are many ways to express yourself: your hair colour, hair style, and clothing being chief among them. Wearing a costume to campus on Halloween, however, is not one of those ways.When you wear a costume you literally cover yourself and pretend to be someone else. Worse, you blend into the (sometimes faceless) mass of people who wore the same costume as you.
When you wear a costume you literally cover yourself and pretend to be someone else. Worse, you blend into the (sometimes faceless) mass of people who wore the same costume as you.
Yes, it says something about you if you are willing to wear nothing but spandex in below-zero weather, but under your Hulk mask I won’t be able to tell who “you” is anyway.
Often, the class is too large for it to matter. There is a time and a place for asking people about their costumes and, unlike Halloween costume parties, massive lecture classes are neither.
If you do decide to wear a costume, you are faced with a choice between stacking your costume over enough clothes to be warm outside, or not. If you opt for the former you will likely be melting in class, and if you opt for the latter you could literally get frostbite outside. Neither of these two scenarios are fun, and there are better ways to start a conversation than praying someone is empathetic enough to notice your suffering.
Of course this doesn’t mean you need to ignore Halloween altogether. You can still have fun with candy, decorations, parties, and other shenanigans. Halloween can be lots of fun, and there’s no need to define it as just wearing a costume to class. Use this Halloween to put yourself out there and try talking to those classmates you generally ignore, or go to events you otherwise skip, rather than just hiding yourself away under a costume.
— Shay Lewis
