Trunk or Treat, a clever twist on the average Halloween night, provides those who attend a night filled with student-organized activities. The NHS-sponsored event, along with Key Club, raises funds for Angel Tree, an organization that provides needy children with Christmas gifts to ensure they receive at least one gift.
NHS organizes the event and, along with Key Club, donates all the candy. To help support the cause, several other clubs participate in providing Halloween-themed activities for Trunk or Treat participants to enjoy. For instance, an environmental awareness club, Black Gold and Green (BGG), has offered a variety of environmentally-friendly activities. These include the dirt pudding cup activity in which participants crush oreos and mix gummy worms in pudding to make a popular treat. The club has also featured an entertaining activity where children lower their hand into an covered bucket filled with cooked noodles as volunteers convince them that the bucket is filled with live worms.
“It is great to participate in such a great activity (Trunk or Treat),” Ms. Jennifer Page, BGG club advisor, said. “There are so many clubs that contribute to making this a great event. They are able to raise a lot of money for Angel Tree [and] it’s a great organization that we are happy to be able to help support.”
Not only do the activities keep visitors coming back to the event year after year, but the effort put into the decorations do as well. Various clubs’ members and volunteers decorate each room and dress in costume to complement the theme. NHS also creates the annual haunted house, an entirely student-decorated and student-operated attraction that induces children to cautiously creep through it every year.
In addition to the rooms, visitors experience arguably the most anticipated part of Halloween: receiving candy. In the Clock Tower parking lot, as trunk-or-treaters walk through the rows of decorated car trunks supplied with mounds of candy, they receive candy from the open hands of costumed senior high students, who wait patiently beside their decorated cars.
Although some volunteers receive service hours and those in NJHS receive points for helping make Trunk or Treat a reality, the true reward lies in the multiple purposes of the night: raising funds for Angel Tree and providing everyone an experience to remember.
Trunk or Treat is open from 5:30 to 7:30 Halloween night, and those who wish to come have the option of purchasing tickets in advance for $5 or at the door for $7 dollars.
