October is near its end, which means Halloween is just around the corner, and many students are still trying to figure out how to bring Halloween cheer to their lives on campus.
But for the students who have found creative ways of expressing themselves, Halloween is looking better than ever. Student creative expression is being carried out in very big ways in some very small spaces: dorm rooms.
Freshman roommates Kristin Brisbois and Emily Hansen decided early to resurrect the spooky spirit of Halloween in Darnell.
“We started shopping for it in September,” Brisbois said, explaining that holiday decorating had become a bonding activity for her and her roommate.
“We didn’t tell any of our friends what we were doing,” Brisbois said. “We ordered a lot of stuff from Oriental Trading Company. We also went to Ralphs and stocked up on supplies, but kept them hidden in bags in our room until we were ready to put them up. Then we had everyone come over after we had finished, and it was pretty great.”
Walking into Brisbois and Hansen’s dorm room is like walking into a haunted house. Seasonally themed caution tape lines the walls, and if you’re especially tall, watch out for the colony of bats hanging from the ceiling. But these slightly disturbing elements of the room are ultimately outweighed by the dozens of smiling pumpkins that sneer, “We love Jesus,” and the neon-colored glow-in-the-dark stars that cover parts of the ceiling where bats haven’t taken root.
“It wasn’t difficult once we got started,” Hansen said about the decorating process. “We are really into impulse buying and surprising each other with new stuff for the dorm room. So we really got into it. We might have lost control a little bit, but it was ultimately worth it. We both love the way it turned out.”
Freshman Ginger Jacobsen also got into the spirit of decorating with her roommate Kelly Corsco in Crocker, taking some pointers from fellow Pepperdine swim team members who have had fun with it in the past.
“She [teammate Sarah Burris] actually gave us real cloves of garlic to fend off vampires. We thought that was a little bit too much, so it ended up in our garbage after a day,” Jacobsen said about getting started.
“Our first decorations arrived as a surprise to the both of us when my mom mailed us some fun Halloween stickers for our windows. Then we went down to CVS for some more decorations, but we still wanted more after that. So Corsco’s parents brought us some fun things while they were visiting one day.”
For those itching to jump onto the dorm decorating bandwagon and head straight to Ralphs and CVS for supplies, listen to these veteran decorators for some wise advice.
“Try to find someone who’s decorated for the occasion before,” Jacobsen said. “For us, it was Sarah. Being that the dorms are pretty small, we took advantage of the window space by covering them with the ghost images and the stickers. If you have no desk space and don’t want to decorate your windows, think about decorating your door, because everyone sees that when they walk by.”
Brisbois and Hansen offer a warning against doing too much too quickly.
“If you go into it with no plan at all, you could end up buying way more than you can actually handle,” Hansen said. “We ended up getting a skeleton hand that guards a bowl of candy. It’s super light sensitive and yells at us whenever somebody walks by. But what’s most annoying is that we can’t keep candy in the jar for longer than a day without it being eaten.”
“That’s one thing that I would say not to buy early: a candy jar,” continued Brisbois. “Just trust me. It’s a bad idea.”
Halloween might be fast approaching, but Brisbois and Hansen said they are already looking toward the future.
“We have already started shopping for Thanksgiving stuff,” Brisbois said. For these master decorators, it’s never too early to plan ahead.
