On Oct 29,  Mercyhurst was crawling with costumes from the faculty and students. The university hosted a campus-wide costume contest via Instagram Stories. If you are following the Mercyhurst Instagram, you would have seen all the costumes being posted on Instagram Stories that day. There were Star Wars, Pirates, and many other creative costumes from friends here on campus.

This contest is a long-running tradition for the Mercyhurst family. This competition is a fun event that the whole campus looks forward to. This year, Halloween was on a Sunday and so the campus celebrated early on Friday to get in the spirit a little sooner,

Mercyhurst used the hashtag, #SeizeTheScare which was incredibly fitting to put the university into the spirit of the holiday. Using this hashtag puts every post in one place so they are all together to remember. If someone wanted to post their group or single costumes, they could use this hashtag and be a part of the group.

There were many group costumes such as Star Wars, decades, and Donna and the Dynamos. Every single one was so cute and creative. The Dance Department sported Star Wars with their teacher, Jennifer McNamara as their fearless leader, Darth Vader. The marketing department did the decades with Sean Cuneo as Marty McFly, the rest of the group dressed as icons from the different 1900’s decades. There was the 70s hippie, a 50s Rosie the Riveter and a 90s velour tracksuit. Another group costume was the cast of Scooby-Doo starring Willow Lapp as Daphne Blake, Kirk Morrison as Shaggy, Addie McCoy as Velma, and Ethan Houk as Fred Jones.

There were also single costumes as well and they were so fun and clever. Lauren Giles who is a professor in the science department dressed as the iconic, late Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She even had the black robe and white lace collar! Amanda Mulder, who is our Student Support Coordinator, dressed up as Ursula from The Little Mermaid. She had an incredible dress with tentacles and a crown! Finally, Dr. Joseph Johnson from the Physics department disguised himself as Clark Kent the reporter for the Daily Planet. His costume was super.

On Monday, Nov. 1, the university officially announced the winner of the #SeizetheScare competition. The winning costume was a group costume hosted by students in the Dance Department. The group sported Star Wars-themed apparel– lightsabers and all! 

There were so many more costumes than mentioned here. If you want to see more creativity and spookiness from our students, type in #seizethescare into Instagram and you can see more! The university is incredibly excited to see what creativity will come with next Halloween.