Candy, costumes, and contests made their way to campus on Monday, bringing the Halloween spirit to Redhawks a week early. 

To kick off the spooky season, band continued with their annual Halloween tradition, Trunk R Treat. This year, the event saw a change in location from the band parking lot to the gym and surrounding hallway due to the high chance of rain.

“There were going to be people that look at the weather and decide not to come regardless, so for us just moving it inside kind of took some of that equation out,” assistant band director Johnathon Jadvani said. “We made the call earlier in the week when I saw the forecast just to say hey we are still going to have it we are going to move it inside because of rain.”

Although the event’s location changed, many attendees still felt that Trunk R Treat held up its reputation of being one of the year’s highlights.

“It was organized, but like its tighter space except for in the gym,” Trunk R Treater Aiden Schroeder said. “But like when it’s in the hallway it’s really skinny so it’s hard to move around, but it’s still a lot of fun.”

Trunk R Treat is geared towards students, and teachers and staff had the opportunity to show their Halloween spirit earlier on Monday with a chili cook-off and pumpkin decorating contest. 

“The theme was Alice in Wonderland. We are an English department, so I figured why not go with a novel, kind of a timeless one that’s also been turned into a movie,” English teacher Vanessa Melvin said. “My favorite part was getting to utilize my creative background. I don’t have a whole lot of time for extra crafts and stuff, but this seemed like a fun way to blow off some steam and bust out those old creative talents that I had once upon a time in college.”

The English department wasn’t the only one that chose to connect their pumpkin to the subject they teach.

“This year I thought our pumpkin was pretty cute for social studies,” social studies teacher Sarah Wiseman said. “It’s encouraging voting. And then I saw some of the other ones and they’re also pretty awesome.”

The art department also featured the subject they teach, but with a slightly different approach than others.

“The art department actually had three of our AP art students design the pumpkin,” art teacher Fred Rodriguez said. “We did a Monet, Starry Night themed pumpkin, and we wanted to pair the theme with what we do as a fine art department.”

AP Drawing student sophomore Hallie Wang played a role in the making of the art department’s pumpkin, from the idea’s inception to the creation of the final product.

“The paintings we decided to incorporate into the pumpkin were Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, and Picasso’s Weeping Woman,” Wang said. “My friend came up with the idea of painting patches of other paintings, a ‘franken-pumpkin’ in her words. I love painting and designing things so this was really fun.”