The magic of Halloween, if I ever felt it, disappeared sometime after I donned my homemade bunny ears for the last time and before the frenzy and utter chaos of Harwood Halloween created an irreversible connection in my mind between a killer hangover and the image of a grinning pumpkin. Fortunately, there are those among us who keep Halloween Scrooges like me doubting our convictions, such as the nearly 300 Claremont College participants who hosted dozens of disadvantaged or disabled children this past Friday for Halloween festivities. Mortar Board, the Community Affairs Committee, and CCATCH (Claremont Colleges Allegiance Towards Child Help) upheld a three-year tradition of volunteerism around Halloween by bringing almost 100 children from local organizations on campus for pumpkin carving and trick-or-treating.

Dan May Pumpkins and pipe-cleaners: the possibilities are endless.

Mortar Board–a senior honor society dedicated to community service on campus–hosted 35 kids from the Crippled Children’s Society in a charmingly chaotic Smith Campus Center courtyard equipped with dozens of donated pumpkins, carving tools, paint, glue, markers, and pipe cleaners. The project–staffed by 40 Claremont Colleges volunteers and headed by Shauna Antley ‘00–gave a number of handicapped children the opportunity to run amok in costume and decorate elaborate creations that defied any and all convention in their absurdity. The kids, who had come prepared in a remarkably dazzling array of costumes, alternately adorned the pumpkins with every possible material available and ran through the courtyard scaring the daylights out of each other. The mayhem and merriment resulted not only in 35 very happy kids but an incredible display of surrealist jack-o-lanterns that proved to be the most gratifying and pleasantly puzzling display of imagination I’ve seen all semester.

The Trick-or-Treating event later that afternoon, sponsored by the Community Affairs Committee, brought 65 children from Childhelp USA to Pomona’s campus. This year’s event marked the third Halloween that Childhelp, a home for abused or neglected children, has come to campus as a result of the efforts of Gabriel London ’00 and the CAC. The project depends on Pomona students signing up in the dining halls to receive the trick-or-treaters in their dorm rooms. The costumed candy-seakers arrived at 6:00 p.m. Friday evening, and for two hours, the Claremont College students involved with CCATCH–a one-on-one mentor program of London’s creation–led the kids from room to room, providing a safe event for the kids as well as a refreshing reminder of the satisfaction of interaction with a generation other than our own. The CAC estimates over 300 Pomona students participated; some faculty in residence took part, and entire sponsor groups decorated their halls and handed out candy.

This kind of close interaction with many children, suggests London, inspires students to bridge the gap between one-time events such as these and more long-term commitments to volunteering. London’s program, developed after a year volunteering at Childhelp, pairs each student with a Childhelp kid and brings them all together on campus every two to three weeks. This past week, the CCATCH volunteers acted as guides, taking children from dorm to dorm and organizing a pizza party for them.

I was a little sad Friday evening, because although I’d signed up to receive trick-or-treaters, only a few made it all the way up to Clark-I, a far distance away from the sponsor-group enthusiasm of South Campus. Fortunately, I’d been able to take part earlier in the day by carving a pumpkin with a little boy named Daniel, who was sweet and saved me the horror of his Scream-style mask by keeping it in his backpack while I was helping him. I was also comforted by the fact that such a huge number of students had volunteered their time that day to make everything happen–a comfort that, needless to say, remained long after the hangover finally faded away.