The following piece, written by the opinion editors, reflects the majority opinion of the editorial board.
The going-out forecast for the next two days may seem typical for most weekends in Oxford, but you may notice something different. Yes, thousands of students will still stumble around various Uptown establishments, sloshing cups with brightly colored liquids, making nonsensical chatter with one another until closing time. Along with all of the usual ensuing ridiculousness that happens, this weekend we get to add candy corn shots and props "that go with my character" to the mix.
Intoxicated guys will approach unassuming girls using pick-up lines that involve "boo!" and "trick or treat."
The go-to ice-breaker will no longer be about age or hometown, but confused looks of "what exactly are you supposed to be?"
This is the portrait of how college students take on Halloween - and we, as the Editorial Board, are pretty much over it.
Going out is already a challenging task, but now we have to spend a month Googling creative costumes only to procrastinate and spend Friday rummaging through our closets to find something that could serve as a cape.
We are already routinely graced with the sloppiness that shows up at Brick Street on Saturday nights, but now we get to watch plaid-wearing lumberjacks make out with girls dressed in all black, claiming to be one rodent or another.
So if you notice a group of disgruntled young people sitting on the side of the bar, dressed as "muggles," it's probably some of The Miami Student staff. We are looking around at the mimes and the basketball players and ninjas and we are desperately longing for the Halloween of our youth.
We have a bone to pick with whoever made Halloween weekend such an obnoxiously exhausting thing for college students.
We miss marking a big smiley face next to Oct. 31 in our calendars and counting down the days until trick or treat. We miss dressing up as a fly in a cobweb, beanie baby, Mr. Potato Head, Captain Hook or the tooth fairy. We miss getting into the spirit of it and our parents letting us eat a whole bag of candy.
We remember excitedly going from door to door and exclaiming, "I'm a Power ranger" and then asking our friends to swap a Reese's for a Jolly Rancher. Halloween was once about the simple, childlike fun of pretending to be something else for a night, of entering a world where you could walk down your neighborhood as a princess or a cowboy and nobody would look at you.
But now, we're stuck in this twisted adult version of Halloween where we swap bags of candy for incessant amounts of alcohol and our favorite childish costumes for skanky outfits that in no way make sense in Ohio's weather.
Don't get us wrong: Halloween is still pretty fun. We enjoy the creativity some students display with their witty costumes. But, for the most part, we miss the old days.
Halloween has progressively lost its appeal as the years have gone on. It's worse than any other weekend in Oxford because there's so much pressure to have a clever, yet attractive costume when you show up to a party. Sometimes, we would just much rather drink our beer in our normal clothes.
When we continue to partake in Halloween festivities at this age, we are holding onto our childhood. We are full functioning adults, disguising ourselves as fictional beings - escaping reality for a moment.
So, don't be offended if we spend this weekend dreaming of Halloweens past, waiting for everything to go back to normal.even if we are in costume.