MSC Hospitality will celebrate Halloween this year by inviting the children of Bryan-College Station to virtually attend a party filled with Halloween-themed activities.
On Tuesday, Oct. 27 at 6 p.m., MSC Hospitality will host the Halloween party on its Facebook livestream for kids to engage in interactive games and crafts. The supply list is posted in advance on its page. The event allows for children and parents within the community to celebrate Halloween in an exciting, safe manner during the pandemic.
Rutvi Patel, biology senior and MSC Hospitality chair, said the organization strives to host multiple events each year for students as well as the people living in Bryan-College Station.
“We’re a service organization located inside the Memorial Student Center,” Patel said. “Our main goal is to help embody that core value of selfless service by giving back to the community and also to the campus.”
This semester, Emma Banks, business and accounting junior and vice chair of MSC Hospitality, said some changes had to be made to the organization’s traditional events due to the pandemic, specifically its Halloween party.
“We typically have a lot of different children from around the community come to the MSC [where] we throw a big Halloween party with them, but to account for COVID this year, we are going to be holding it all virtually,” Banks said. “We communicate with the Bryan and College Station independent school districts, and then they disseminate that information about how to access the [event] to all the childrens’ parents.”
Patel said people from all over the community will have the opportunity to tune in online and follow along this year.
“Our primary audience is for children [who are] elementary school-aged kids like kindergarten to fifth grade, but anybody who wants to participate is welcome to,” Patel said. “[This is] something that’s really cool that’s been possible with it moving online is that it’s just being more accessible to people.”
Regarding the planned activities, Liam Burhans, biology junior and co-executive director of community outreach, said MSC Hospitality has a range of events with a few surprises embedded.
“It’ll be a mixture of pre-recorded videos as well as a few live things on Facebook, attempting to mimic as close as possible as we can to when the Halloween party was in-person,” Burhans said. “If they’re not able to [attend], they can always go back and [watch] it on their own with their parents or their friends. We also have events involving some A&M figures, [such as] a star appearance from Reveille [and] Corp members.”
Patel said there will be a wide variety of videos from which the children can select from that caters to their interests.
“There’s one with cutting out cardboard ghosts and decorating it,” Patel said. “We’re going to have reading [of] a spooky children’s book, just so [they] can have some of that scary side of Halloween. It’s a bunch of different collective videos that people can pick and choose whatever they want out of the experience.”
While the party’s activities range from teaching kids how to make Halloween snacks to hosting an interactive costume competition, Banks said its overall purpose is to truly connect with the community.
“It’s just being able… [to] interact with the children and their parents,” Banks said. “This year, since it’s virtual, I’m excited to see the interactions that people are going to be able to have through those videos [and] to see what people comment on them and to hear what feedback they have. It’s a really great way to serve and show our appreciation for the community.”