To celebrate Halloween, the Student Executive Council hosted their annual Trick o’ Treating event on Oct. 30 at lunch. The next day, Japanese teacher Matt Hall held his “Hall”-oween Costume Contest during lunch on the quad.

The trick-or-treating event, which was held in 24 classrooms across campus, consisted of teachers’ waiting at the door and asking visiting students a variety of riddles. Participants received one piece of candy for attempting to answer the riddle and an additional two pieces for providing the correct response.

Math teacher Rachel Congress was among the teachers offering candy.

“Everyone seems really excited about it,” she said. “It’s nice seeing students who I haven’t seen since last year come by.”

Congress fostered collaboration among participants who unsuccessfully answered her riddles.

“If a group didn’t get it, then I would usually not tell them the answer,” she said. “I would let the next person in line try to answer it. So that made it more fun, because they could help each other.”

Hall’s halloween costume contest featured four categories of competitors: solo student costumes, group student costumes, solo staff costumes and group staff costumes. The first-place winner from each category received a $50 prize.

Hall was extremely pleased with the turnout and high quality of costumes, which made judging difficult.

“The group costumes really impressed me this year more than previous years, and some of the solo ones were really good,” he said. “Part of me starts thinking maybe I should do second and third because there’s definitely some second and third places, and we were having trouble choosing between the teacher groups. Certainly there could have been a couple of ties.”

Although Hall’s costume contest is a Gunn-exclusive event, it has its roots across town.

“We started it in 2013-ish at Paly,” Hall said. “We did it for about five or six years there. When I moved over here to take over the Japanese program in 2020, we couldn’t do it that first year, since we were all on Zoom. But then the minute we got back on campus, I was like, let’s do it.”

Hall expects the event to become even more popular over time.

“This is year three, and so far, it keeps trending up,” he said. “I’m sure next year there’ll be an even larger turnout.”

“Hall”-oween Costume Contest Winners:
Solo student costume: Junior Kameron Sato
Group student costume: Junior Dea Zajimi, senior Danny Cox, senior Julia Maecker, senior Sophie Rong, senior Joey Rueff, senior Kristy Rueff, senior Quinn Sarrazin and senior Sophia Turean
Solo staff costume: English teacher Jordan Wells
Group staff costume: Science department