USC families balance campus visits and Halloween festivities

This year, Trojan Family Weekend runs October 29 through November 1, overlapping with Saturday’s spooky holiday and USC football’s high-stakes matchup with No. 2 Ohio State. Some students and visiting relatives said they were finding ways to balance campus activities, family time and Halloween parties.

Some students, like Mia Dreis, a sophomore majoring in civil engineering, prefer to keep the celebrations separate. Dreis said her parents decided not to visit because they were concerned about fitting Family Weekend activities around Halloweekend plans.

“It’s just not the best time for parents to overlap with students at the school,” Dreis said. “I know some people’s parents are pretty down to come and to let their kids do whatever they want to do for Halloween, but for me personally, my parents didn’t come because it was Halloween.”

Earlier this semester, USC fraternities and sororities hosted “Greek Family Weekend,” which included events for parents to attend during the last weekend of September to avoid family weekend overlapping with Halloween. The September festivities were hosted by USC’s affiliated and unaffiliated Greek Life organizations and were unaffiliated with the University and its official family weekend.

“I guess it made it a little more hectic,” said Anjali Anand, a junior political science major. “I’m in a sorority, so it was kind of like parents’ weekend was going to coincide with Halloween weekend activities, [and] I’m pretty sure my sorority moved it so that we could do it separately.”

For some families who made the trip this week, though, sharing the weekend did not necessarily mean sharing every plan.

Terry Kettler’s daughter initially worried her parents would get in the way of Halloween festivities. The family, visiting from Potomac, Maryland, reassured her that their earlier bedtimes would leave her evenings free.

They planned to attend the football game separately, with their daughter in the student section, and her parents elsewhere. Her Halloween costume remained something of a mystery.

“So I know she got a costume. She said she went to Goodwill, and she’s some kind of superhero,” Kettler said. “That was all I could get out of her.”

Aman Al Tawil traveled from Abu Dhabi, stopping in Washington, D.C., to pick up her daughter’s grandmother for Family Weekend. Al Tawil said her daughter was excited about the visit, particularly because living abroad limited the family’s opportunities to see one another.

“She has her plans, but everything outside of that, she’s all she’s with us,” Al Tawil said.

For the Bennett family, visiting from Birmingham, England, the overlap offered a chance to combine Family Weekend and Halloween in one trip. Liam Bennett, a sophomore majoring in business administration, said he planned to visit Universal Studios with his family and bring his younger brother to fraternity events.

The weekend also offered families a closer look at students’ academic lives and campus resources. The Trojan Family Weekend includes more than 200 activities, including lectures, open houses and a USC-hosted tailgate on Saturday before the Ohio State game.

At one of the first events of the weekend Thursday afternoon, USC President Beong-Soo Kim, recently appointed Provost David Madigan and Chief Campus Health Officer Dr. Sarah Van Orman, discussed students’ experiences in and beyond the classroom during a provost panel.

At the event, Kim said it is important for students to develop relationships alongside their academic work.

“For all of you who have gone to college, think about what you learned from college … for most of us, it’s the relationships. It was the sense of joy,” Kim said. “That’s what we want kids to work with. A sense of identity and the relationships that are going to be more important than anything else.”

Crystal Riggs, visiting from Austin, Texas, for her third Family Weekend, was making room for Halloween outings with her daughter. Her son, a high school senior, stayed home for football senior night and Halloween, but Riggs and her daughter planned to take a haunted Hollywood tour and visit Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights.

Riggs expected her daughter’s celebrations to continue throughout the visit.

“Our daughter says she has three Halloween outfits, and she’s only been able to wear one at parties so far,” Riggs said. “So I guarantee you, she’s probably gonna break out another Halloween outfit this weekend.”

Edited by Adilene Gomez Santiago and Sean Campbell.