Student council hosts first annual trunk-or-treat event

Myah Lear, Media Manager|November 4, 2022

On Oct. 31, the school hosted a trunk-or-treat event for children of faculty who work in the Altoona Area School District. About 160 kids showed up to the event with their parents.

Clubs had the opportunity to sign up to help with trunk-or-treat. The clubs who signed up were the Horseshoe Yearbook and Mountain Echo Newspaper, National Honor Society, National Art Honor Society, Thespian Society, Student Ambassadors, foreign language club, Circle of Friends, Girls League, orchestra, Junior Academy of Science, astronomy club, junior and senior executive committees, student council, FCCLA, Mountain Lion Maniacs and Key Club.

“We have different organizations from the school who had tables that either had crafts or candy to hand out to children of Altoona Area School District employees,” student council adviser Jessica Hogan said. “We knew that it would be too huge of an undertaking to open this up to the whole public, that we would not be able to do something on that larger scale, and we wanted to sort of give back to the employees of the district. We thought this would be a nice way to do that.”

The event started at 6 p.m. and ran until 8 p.m. Faculty and their children would enter through the front of the B building to start trick-or-treating.

“People were greeted when they walked in, and then there were student council kids ushering people around,” student council adviser Jessica Hogan said. “There were some candy-givers in the black box theater, one craft and three candy tables.”

The National Art Honor Society participated in the trunk-or-treat event.

“We had created these cardboard cutouts for the children to stick their heads in, and they could take pictures with them,” junior Yalena Harris said. “ We kind of made up our own designs, and we actually used my design which was pumpkins stacked on pumpkins, so they could be their own pumpkin.”

The advisers of different clubs helped to make the trunk-or-treat happen by setting up the booths.

“These advisers were thrilled to get involved, and I sent a survey out to the whole staff, and the ones who responded were like ‘this is a great idea. Let’s do it.’ They came to us with really good ideas,” Hogan said. “Mrs. Dumm had the idea to have slime ready. The girl’s league did a princess table. So that was cute and the orchestra played spooky music. I think everybody brought a lot of their own talent to it, and I was excited for that.”

The idea for the trunk-or-treat came from a brainstorming meeting that happened over summer break.

“We just went sort of month by month talking about what sort of things we want to do to get the student council involved and leading activities in the school. One of those things was the trunk-or-treat for October. It works out really well that Oct. 31 is not the night of trick-or-treat, so it gives people extra time to wear their costume and get more candy,” Hogan said.

Some of the clubs and organizations provided their own candy for trunk-or-treat, and others got candy supplied by the student council.

“Some of the organizations said they could bring their own candy, and some of them asked us, as the student council, to provide the candy. Then, they said they would budget for it next year when we did this. So, we thought, that’s perfectly fair, because we did bring this up at the beginning of the year,” Hogan said. “We, as student council, are providing candy to the different clubs, and we’ve provided some decorations. We’ve bought a lot of decorations that we hope we can use year after year.”

Some of the students who participated in trunk-or-treat participated for multiple clubs.

“’I’m in five different clubs,” senior Vanessa Roman said. “Originally I went with the student council, but then I ended up at National Art Honor Society, and then I also stopped by the National Honor Society.”

According to Roman, the event was fun to hold and help with.

“I guess I did it because it seemed like a fun event,” Roman said. “It was a bunch of little kids and half of them were really cute dressed up, and I saw a kid in a little giraffe costume. I just wanted it to be fun. I also donated candy too. I remember I was young and things like that were fun.”

Hogan hopes that this is an event that will be continued in the future for clubs and kids to participate in.

“We’ve invested in decorations and the organizations who’ve joined in. We’re like ‘Next year, we’ll know to prepare for this, or we’ll have stuff ready. We really hope to have it continue,” Hogan said. “I don’t want to think of a reason why it wouldn’t continue. That would make me sad. I’m really hoping that it’s something that the kids have a good time with, and we can do and have a nice time with.”