Story was originally printed with an 8 p.m. start time 
Fright Night Fest, one of Trinity’s newest on-campus Halloween events, is taking place on the Jim Potter Intramural Field this Friday at 7 p.m. This party is hopefully the first of many more to come, said Ty Kostopoulos, senior biochemistry and molecular biology major and a Student Programming Board (SPB) event planner.

“Hopefully that’ll be a trendy tradition moving forward,” Kostopoulos said. “That’s what we’re hoping, is that it’ll be an annual thing where we do some sort of Halloween festival.”

In the past, Trinity’s campus has celebrated Halloween through events like TigerTV’s annual Halloween specials, the classic “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and the various Halloween-themed socials put on by campus clubs. But large in-person events specifically geared towards the celebration of Halloween are less common.
“There’s really not a lot that goes on, aside from Halloween on Oakmont, that’s here on campus, that’s super accessible for students to come to celebrate Halloween,” Kostopoulos said.

Chloe Scroggins, senior business analytics and technology major and SPB event planner, explained that SPB’s Halloween-time event last year was a Waka Flocka Flame concert that took place on the same field. The event itself was successful but not Halloween-themed in the way that Fright Night Fest will be.

“Last year, we had Waka Flocka at the same time … but now we’re trying to do a Halloween festival, [the] first of its kind,” Scroggins said.

SPB is planning to go big this year with the budget for Fright Night Fest. Participating students will get to enjoy perks like a haunted house, Halloween-themed food and drinks, a DJ and more.

“The overall experience that students are going to get at this event is going to be heightened because it is an event with a larger budget, which means that we can splurge a little bit more on stuff to make the ambiance super cool,” Kostopoulos said. “So, unlike Waka Flocka, there’s going to be an actual dance floor that lights up and has LED lights on it, as well as a full DJ that we rented that has a booth. We have our own songs selected that we wanted to play.”

Scroggins explained that the goal of the event is to have a little something for everyone.

“We want to have it where if you don’t like the dance floor, you can do Haunted Maze. If you don’t like Haunted Maze, you can go sit with free food in the lounge,” Scroggins said. “If you don’t like that, we have a photo booth.”

Because SPB is led by students, the gap between event planning and participating is smaller. Being both students and event planners means that SPB knows what the students actually want when it comes to entertainment and can carry those wishes out.

“It’s an event that us students actually get to pick for other students because we know what we like,” Kostopoulos said.

Christina Garcia, senior political science major, also made mentioned the fact that students have the opportunity to volunteer at future SPB events. Anyone is welcome, and volunteers get a free gift card.

“If anyone else wants to volunteer and help out SPB at future events, please do … They get a gift card for coming in and volunteering for an hour,” Garcia said.

Students who have other plans that night can easily fit the 7 p.m. party into their schedule, as Fright Night Fest is taking place on an easily accessible part of the campus and students are free to come and go as they please.

“It’s gonna be on the IM field,” Scroggins said. “So freshmen can just walk over there and we don’t have to transport you. It should just be an immersive experience. Like, ‘oh, come on in, like come in costume.’ It’d be really fun.”
Garcia had similar thoughts, adding that she felt the event could be a unifying experience.

“I feel like that’s a really great way to make friends. It’s just a good way for Trinity students to all be in one space,” Garcia said. “I find that oftentimes, our campus can be a little bit divided. And I think this gives us an opportunity to all be together.”