Hundreds of children dressed in Halloween costumes gathered on the Lawn Wednesday evening with their families for the annual Trick-or-Treating on the Lawn — a University tradition that attracts members of the Charlottesville community, faculty, students and alumni with dozens of University groups volunteering to hand out candy.
The event is sponsored by Housing and Residence Life and is put on by residents in all 54 Lawn rooms and the West Range with candy provided by approximately 70 student groups and other organizations. Opening up graduate student residencies to trick-or-treaters is a new addition this year aimed to engage more of the University community.
“One of my missions was to reunite an actual Academical Village — to bring the Lawn and the Range together,” Senior Lawn Resident Joan Lee said. “The largest community event we have is Trick-or-Treating on the Lawn.”
As a Senior Lawn Resident, Lee was responsible for organizing the event. She said that there were many changes involved in this year’s planning, including starting the event an hour later and extending the volunteers beyond just resident advisors.
“A lot of the changes and ways our Trick-or-Treating on the Lawn was approached this year was by listening to the new ideas and concerns that people had raised and seeing how to involve more people than ever before,” Lee said.
Support for the event was provided by the Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Facilities Management, Parking and Transportation departments, as well as the University Police Department to ensure the night ran smoothly. Housing and Residence Life staffed the event with RAs and senior residents who volunteered to help visitors throughout the evening. This year, volunteering was opened up to other residents who wished to help with the community event.
“The volunteers usually have always only been RAs, because this is fundamentally a Housing and Residence Life event,” Lee said. “Someone had reached out and asked, ‘Can other people join and volunteer for this community event?’ and I said, ‘Why not — why does it necessarily have to just be within HRL?’”
The University Judiciary Committee was one of the many student organizations volunteering on the Lawn. Slade Sinak — a first-year College student and member of the UJC — said that he was excited to volunteer for his first Trick-or-Treating on the Lawn experience.
“It’s nice to be able to interact with the community,” Sinak said. “A lot of the time we’re kind of segmented off so it’s good to kind of get out there and be able to interact with the greater Charlottesville community. … Also, there’s so many kids, and we never get to see kids.”
See photos from the event on The Cavalier Daily's Facebook page at this link.