UTMSU Hosts “Chills and Thrills” Event in Celebration of Halloween
The Five Day Event saw multiple organizations work together to craft various events catering to students’ fears.
To capture Halloween spirit, the University of Toronto Mississauga Student Union (UTMSU) organized a weeklong program dubbed “Chills and Thrills” for students to partake in, from October 21 to 25.
The event consisted of a new Halloween-themed activity every day for a week. The lineup included tote bag painting, a movie night, a haunted house, a pub night at the Blind Duck Pub, a trip to Canada’s Wonderland, and a pumpkin carving contest, the winners of which were announced on Halloween.
The tote bag painting event was a joint effort by the UTMSU’s Here to Help program (formerly Peer Support Program) and the World University Service Canada’s (WUSC) UTM chapter. The program was a drop-in event that took place at 11 am on October 21 and was held at the Student Centre Presentation Room. Students were provided with tote bags, paints, glitter, and all the materials they could need.
The movie night event, Scream Fest, in collaboration with the UTM Film Club, screened Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, a Halloween flick chosen by students. The Medium interviewed Jacqueline Agyei-Odame, one of the presidents of the Film Club, to find out more about the event.
The Fest took place on October 22, at 7 pm in IB140, which was decked out in Halloween decorations and had a photo booth where students could take Polaroid pictures, to remind them of the memories made at the event. Additionally, with a run time of only one hour and 17 minutes, the movie was conveniently timed to serve as a little break for students from the monotony of studying.
The UTMSU partnered with the English and Drama Student’s Society (EDSS) and the UTM Arts Club for the haunted house event, Escape from Erindale, which was held in the student centre on October 23, from 7:30 pm onwards.
As per the president of the EDSS, Shunsho Ando Heng and the co-presidents of the UTM Arts Club, Belinda Zhao and Vanessa Finnerty, the storyline for the haunted house revolved around a UTM student who failed their midterm and placed a curse on the university, turning everyone into ghouls.
To create a fusion of a haunted house and an escape room, the students in the haunted house were tasked with finding a specific four-word phrase (No more 8 am midterms), which was the key to exorcising the Student Centre.
The haunted house made use of both silence and scare tactics and featured scare actors, who were UTM students primarily sourced from the Theatre and Drama Studies, Drama and Dramaturgy, CCIT, and English programs. The haunted house featured many jump scares, including ghouls banging on the lockers and screaming, student-chasing ghouls, and a dead body.
The next event, which took place on October 24, was the Last Dance Pub Night, held at the Blind Duck Pub. The Blind Duck had been transformed into a spooky lair, and students were dressed to the nines in their Halloween costumes. There was a costume contest at the end of the night, with the best costume prizes awarded for both singles and groups.
The UTMSU also organized a trip to Canada’s Wonderland annual Halloween Haunt event as part of day four of Chills and Thrills. According to Joy Pius, the UTMSU’s VP Campus Life, the event took place on October 25, and the UTMSU provided students with discounted tickets, inclusive of transportation to and from Wonderland. The Halloween Haunt event consisted of specific Wonderland rides and six haunted houses, where employees were dressed up as popular scary characters.
The last event of the weeklong program was a pumpkin carving contest which was held virtually to promote sustainability. On the reasoning behind choosing such a venue, Pius revealed that since students often carve pumpkins at home with family and friends, hosting the contest online would reduce the amount of waste that would normally be produced, thereby supporting more eco-friendly practices.
