ANALYSIS

There’s no shortage of odd and ideological Halloween activities on college campuses again this year, from a zombie drag show to a Vodou workshop to a “family-friendly” play about Frankenstein confronting “climate change.”

The play, “Frankenstein – A Living Comic Book,” was performed this week at San Juan College in New Mexico.

The college’s events page described the performance as a “new family-friendly spin on the literary classic” where “Frankenstein confronts modern issues of climate change, artificial intelligence, and our relationship to technology. Monsters of our own making.” 

Along similar lines, the University of California at Santa Cruz recently held a “Festival of Monsters” academic conference where talks included “monstrosity” and “white heteropatriarchal masculinism,” and “Never Let Go and Black Monstrous Motherhood,” The College Fix reported. 

At the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, there was a zombie-themed drag show. 

As The Daily Nebraskan reports, the student club Spectrum UNL hosted a Night of the Living Drag Show where students danced in drag and lip-synced to music:

Miss Calculation, otherwise known as Simon Schoenbeck, entered the stage in an all black outfit and fedora lip-syncing to the song “All Men Are Pigs” by Studio Killers. Schoenbeck is a PhD student in computer science and a graduate advisor for Spectrum UNL.

Spectrum UNL hosted a Night of the Living Drag Show at the University of Lincoln; Spectrum UNL/Instagram

Another performer held a sign that read “Trans rights are human rights,” according to the report.

At the University of Maryland, College Park, a student organization for “queer Latine” students hosted a “scary stories” event. Students were invited to dress in costumes, make “boo baskets” and share “stories about being queer/coming out,” according to the De Colores UMD Instagram page.

On the topic of spirituality, two universities hosted workshops on Paganism and Vodou 

One at Elon University, traditionally a Protestant Christian institution, was a purposeful “effort to bring more Pagan-centered events to campus,” according to an Elon News Network article.  

The “Veil is Thin: Spells, Symbols and Stories” event included “spell bag making, pumpkin painting and tarot card readings,” the report states. 

Another at the University of Maryland offered students a “hands-on interactive” taste of the Haitian religion Vodou with Priestess Carole “Mawoule” Demesmin. The workshop was sponsored by the university French program. 

And, although perhaps not directly Halloween related, the University of Michigan at Flint recently hosted a fall event to help students de-stress by smashing pumpkins with baseball bats.

The annual “Smashing Pumpkins” event is a project of the university’s Counseling and Psychological Services as “a healthy and uniquely fun way of relieving midsemester stress.”

MORE: Under Trump 2.0, colleges celebrate Halloween instead of warning against ‘offensive’ costumes