Friends and families of University of Maryland affiliates — including many costumed children — gathered on Oct. 25 in the Colony Ballroom of the Stamp Student Union for Fall Fest, coordinated in a team effort by Graduate Student Life, Transfer and Off-Campus Student Life, UndocuTerps and Veteran Student Life.
Fall Fest, advertised as “an evening of games, crafts, snacks and raffles,” entertained children with various activities, such as floor games (including a several-foot tall game of Connect 4) with small prizes, children’s storytime sessions, a costume contest and a piñata event.
The Spongebob piñata was burst by Ezaan Shah, a 7-year-old boy in a SWAT costume. Shah was brought to the event with his Supergirl-attired sister, 6-year-old Aiza Shah, by Sajida Baig of Greenbelt, whose partner attends UMD.
The Spongebob piñata was burst by Ezaan Shah, a 7-year-old boy in a SWAT costume. Shah was brought to the event with his Supergirl-attired sister, 6-year-old Aiza Shah, by Sajida Baig of Greenbelt, whose partner attends this university.
This Halloween, Baig plans to take Ezaan and Aiza trick-or-treating. Ezaan, however, has even bigger plans.
“I’m gonna try to make a… let’s see, how long… 500 million thousand meter size bat!” Ezaan said, waving around a bat fashioned out of a balloon by an artist.
There were also plenty of activities for attendees of all ages, including a pumpkin patch with carving and decorating materials, face-painting, a Polaroid photo booth and escape rooms.
Two escape room participants were Revati Naik and Sanaullah Khan, both of whom are international students from India pursuing master’s degrees in robotics at this university.
“This event was really fun because we got to meet a lot of community people. I mean, as graduate students, we don’t get to do that a lot … and also … because we are from a different background, knowing about the different cultural aspects of Halloween was a good thing for us,” Khan said.
As for their Halloween plans, Naik said, “This is our first Halloween in the U.S., so [we’re] not really sure what we are going to do, but I guess we’ll have fun.”
Many people helped this event come together, one being Karrin Thompson, who is working as a communications and marketing graduate assistant in Graduate Student Life while studying at this university to earn a master’s in library information science.
“It started with Graduate Student Life — we have this thing called Family Halloween that we do annually — but this year, we decided to span it out, and decided to have it with the whole Engagement team downstairs [in Stamp],” Thompson said. “And so, we were able to have all these different offices help out and sponsor different things, and then they all worked together to create this event.”
Estimating that around “100 or so” people attended the event, Thompson said that she and her team were “happy with the amount of people that came today” — particularly because she saw the event as important for the community.
“Family events, they’re kind of rare — I actually had a student come up to me today to say how appreciative he was, the fact that we have an event like this because there aren’t a lot of family-friendly events on campus,” Thompson said. “We try to just include the families in and show that you can bring your family, and there’s free things for you to do, and [it’s] a great way to meet other students and all the happy kids.”
Featured photo and video by Michelle Siegel