It’s nearly Halloween, which unfortunately takes place on a Monday this year, but that won’t stop the festivities of Halloweekend. It’s the perfect time for everyone to break out their sluttiest costumes, their brightest makeup, and their drunkest personalities.
But what about those of us who would rather spend the weekend wrapped in a blanket watching fall movies from the comfort of our couch? After all, there’s parties every weekend. Any of those weekends you’d be socially permitted to sit out if you have a good enough excuse. Halloweekend is a different beast. There are no written rules, but unless you’re bedridden sick, you had better be out every night of the infamous holiday weekend.
There are many reasons Halloweekend reeks of stress and anxiety: from the requirement of a revealing costume to the unnecessarily long parties going until 3 in the morning. Not to mention, Halloweekend is the crux of midterms season. We’re either exhausted from exams the week before or already stressed about next week’s. Nonetheless, we go out. And the pressure doesn’t stop once you’ve left the safety of your apartment or dorm. If it’s your first year experiencing college Halloweekend, trust me that it’ll be more extreme than the parties you’ve seen so far, and you will be expected to drink until you’re stumbling home. Halloweekend is when first-years learn their limits the hard way and go overboard for the last time… at least until St. Fratty’s Day. Resident Advisor Collin Marfia was on call in the Yosemite dorms last year, when he had to send three students from three separate parties to the hospital. “And those were only the extremes,” he recalls, “the pressure to go incredibly hard on one weekend just to have fun with friends is a little concerning.”
As a kid your parents took you trick-or-treating. Then there were the glory years where you were too old for trick-or-treating but too young to be invited to any parties, so no one cared whether you put on a costume or not. Now, in college, there is only one option – party until your skin-tight costume is stained with the stench of “witch’s brew.” It seems to me that the lack of options and the pressure to conform on this particular weekend is largely unspoken about. Perhaps it’s the stigma that people who don’t go all out for Halloween are “lame” and “boring.” These mundane words make an impact, as does the risk to our reputation if we refuse to embrace the three peak nights of spooky season. When it comes to Halloweekend, Cal Poly student Zoe Lucchesi feels, “there’s this pressure to be extroverted, even when you aren’t an extrovert.” College has an air of pressure to be your most social self in general, but these expectations are heightened this particular weekend.
Is this pressure beneficial? Should we be strongly encouraged to break out of our shells and celebrate this strange, spooky holiday? For some, maybe. But for many, caving to the pressure fills us with unease and forces us into energy-draining evenings we won’t even remember the next day. However you decide to spend Halloweekend, whether you party or not, keep in mind that you are not the only person who isn’t a Halloweenaholic.