I confess, I did not dress up for Halloween. I had class. But never fear — I did dress up! Saturday was Jose’s Pirates vs. Ninjas birthday party, in which we (the pirates) fought against them (the ninjas) in an epic pan-Reed scavenger hunt. The pirates won, of course (not that it matters). This was followed by pizza, coconut cake, and Ghost Busters (a film which is oddly Lovecraftian, now that I think about it).

Tuesday night was taken up with building corpses for Jacob’s Student Body-funded Halloween surprise. The plan was to dress up as zombies — there was also a chainsaw — and attack the freshman during the morning Humanities lecture, then proceed to terrorize classes throughout the day. Once again, I had class (my few classes are nonetheless badly timed). But I did help out with the corpses! At least, I did until I fell asleep… The dumb thing was that early the next morning, a few hours after they had been hung, they were torn down. It was construed as offensive, a reference to the Jena Six, a tasteless mock lynching.

I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I find this exasperating. We discussed this ahead of time, but decided that it was not inherently offensive. After all, they are common Halloween decorations, and hanged men bring to mind pirates, the Wild West, and criminals at least as much as hate crimes. Plus, our corpses had bright pink rubber hands. We figured that, being Halloween, people might be able to take our gory scene in stride. Yet certain Reed community members were not the only ones who failed to do so. Unfortunately, I’m sure some people are intending racist commentary with their displays, but most are probably just like ours — macabre celebrations of All Hallows Eve. Racism is dumb, but so is being easily offended.

Enough ranting — on to the candy!