From Oct. 28 – 31, SUS hosted a pumpkin carving contest free of charge for all students. Between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., Evered Hall opened its festive and decorated doors and welcomed students to grab a carving tool and go to town on some pumpkins.
These weren’t your ordinary pumpkins; they were large and had a lot of surface area to work with, which was great for carving. The cutting tools provided were sharp and thin enough to bend and cut a curve with — definitely not your Grandma’s dull kitchen knife.
For students stressed and strapped for cash, being able to escape for an hour to do a free craft was awesome, especially one that was hands-on and tactile. Remember the unadulterated joy of making playdough in preschool or mixing cookie dough by hand? That’s the kind of visceral delight I got from gutting a pumpkin with my bare hands.
While there was a lot of thought put into the organization of the contest, it initially wasn’t well staffed. The first day of carving saw about two finished pumpkins, and no one seemed present to make sure students’ information was being taken down or that the carving tools were being returned. However, the day I went to carve, Oct. 29, there were two SUS staff present to strike up a friendly conversation with, making the pumpkin carving experience a little more jovial.
There was a table offering free, reusable SUS bags that contained a bag of candy, a pen, and a bandana with the words “Straight Outta SUS.”
Another table near the back displayed the finished pumpkins along with the categories that could be voted for: best design, best UFV design, funniest design, or scariest design. Students could vote for their favourite pumpkin in each category by writing on the slips of paper provided and slipping them into the corresponding jar. There were some straightforward pumpkins (like the UFV logo), and others that were more abstract (like a generic design artistically titled “The Degradation of Man”).
The prizes weren’t advertised throughout the week, but second place in the best design category received another reusable SUS bag (full of the same products available for free at the event) along with an extra gift box of household samples and assorted snacks. This included Top Ramen, microwaveable popcorn, a Pantene shampoo sample for grey hair, a recently expired Cliff bar, and a Trojan condom.
The unfortunate news is that very few people got to take their pumpkins home. An eraser board outside of Evered Hall directed students to retrieve their pumpkins after a specific time on Halloween, but when I arrived an hour after pick-up time began the pumpkins were already thrown in garbage bags. A SUS employee who was cleaning up said that very few participants came within the hour to pick up their creations and that the pumpkins were starting to rot anyway.
Whether you didn’t want to shell out the cash for a pumpkin or just wanted to put off studying, this year’s pumpkin carving contest was a quiet success. It was a relaxing distraction from midterms that offered candy, free SUS merch, and the chance to win a prize. However, a word to the wise from someone who found out the hard way: next time don’t bother with the contest, just take your pumpkin home after you’re done.
Image: Chandy Dancey
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
