After indulging in a night of risque costume parties and Mask and Wig shows, various Greek chapters decided to return to the fundamental element of Halloween -- the kids.
Several chapters re-celebrated Halloween with Civic House by sponsoring a trick-or-treating affair on Friday. Every year, Civic House invites all the tutees of the West Philadelphia Tutoring Project, Penn Pals and Teach West Philadelphia to campus for extended bonding time with their tutors.
"It's fun for the tutors and tutees to see each other outside of the academic setting," Civic House Associate Director Michael McCook said.
This year, the festivities began with a party at Civic House, where the students prepared themselves for a night out on campus.
And so, with an orange map of participating fraternities, sororities, the Quadrangle and the Newman Center in one hand and their tutors' hand firmly gripped in the other, the candy marauders began their campus pillage.
While some houses, like the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, provided the conventional style of trick-or-treating by doling out candy from their porches, other houses got more creative. The Chi Omega sorority invited their juvenile guests to make pizzas out of English muffins, and the Alpha Chi Omega sorority decorated cookies with the kids.
"It helps that the kids come in our homes with people that they trust and know," Chi Omega President Andrea Harris said. "It's easier for us to make them feel comfortable."
Out of all the houses that the trick-or-treaters visited, when asked about their favorite event, the vote was resoundingly unanimous -- the haunted houses. The Psi Upsilon fraternity, located in the Castle, prepared mummy-wrapping and face painting games in a darkly-lit living room. Hanging doughnuts swayed to the eerie tune of "Thriller," as candles flickered about in the background.
Not to be outdone, the Beta Theta Pi fraternity converted its entire house to look like a deserted residence haunted by an insane professor. The guests took a tour on each floor which was fraught with cobwebs, caterwauling screams and dangling bodies, and the kids loved every moment of it.
"My favorite part was when the man was chopping the other man's body," Jinehneh Sujess, age eight, recounted.
College sophomore Spencer Friedman, one of the tour guides, even had a chance to see the students he had taught last year at the Ethiopian Tutoring Center. Instead of teaching them magic tricks at school, he said he got "to scare the living daylights out of them."
At the end of the night, the raid had finished with candy bags filled, the students happy and, for the participating Greek houses, Halloween a little more complete.
"We had two main goals for this event: to provide a fun, safe location for our local neighbors to trick-or-treat, and to show our surrounding community that we care as a fraternity with the Penn community," Psi Upsilon Social Chairman Roni Elchahal said. "We definitely succeeded in realizing both of these goals."
