With Halloween on the rise, Los Medanos College’s very own learning communities put together a little treat for students to come together and celebrate the festivities. On Thursday Oct. 27, the Student Union building had a halloween party featuring members of the Honors program, MESA, Puente and Art putting it together. The event featured games, food, karaoke, and even painting stations for faces and mini pumpkins.

Honors officer Tatiana Torres took over at the pumpkin painting station at the beginning of the party. She dressed as a student from the “Harry Potter” series and was helping students paint their mini pumpkins that they could take home for free. Torres was looking forward to seeing the student’s creative side and wanted to take home a pumpkin for herself.

At another station inside the Student Union building was the raffle ticket station. At this station, students could donate an item for the LMC Marketplace Thanksgiving basket and be entered to win a prize.

“We have different LMC sweatshirts that were donated by the LMC Bookstore,” said Honors Ambassador Aalyssa Shepherd. “We also have stickers, masks, books and anything like that.”

As for the food, LMC’s learning programs all chipped in for pizza, drinks and snacks. Honors program member Heath Galiwango was handing out slices to everyone and making sure people had a bite to eat. After he’s done with his position, he’s looking forward to belting out on the mic when karaoke comes around.

“We actually had a welcome back picnic for Honors a few weeks ago and we did karaoke towards the end of it,” said Galiwango. “It was a hit so I’m excited to do that later on.”

It went off without a hitch and many students participated in the festival feeling by dressing in their amazing costumes. Some students embraced the scary aspect of Halloween, while others came dressed in cute and funny costumes. Some students even brought nerf guns and proceeded to have a nerf war outside the Student Union building, with some of the students taking advantage of the empty campus to expand their playing field.

Of course when it came time to karaoke, the game room saw a crowd of people waiting to sing their hearts out. LMC student Lance Quinones put together the queue for students to pick up the mic, but that didn’t stop the crowd from joining in. Song after song, the crowd screamed the lyrics and cheered on the singers who would’ve been nervous if it hadn’t been for how accepting and encouraging everyone was.

Professor Scott Cabral arrived an hour after the event had started but enjoyed how the students made it fun. From Karaoke to pumpkin painting, Cabral’s favorite part of the event was seeing all the different costumes the students had.

“I liked the headless person, the cook from Ratatouille, and my favorite, the three dinosaurs,” said Cabral. “The dinosaur costumes were so big that the people inside them could barely walk, it looked like and it was hilarious to watch them play the giant Jenga game. All the students deserve a lot of credit for their amazing costumes.”

Towards the end of the event, students cleaned up their messes, said their goodbyes and went home. It was a fun time for everyone all around, a good stress reliever and a great way to bring in Halloween and the last six weeks of the semester.