The Student Council held a Trunk or Treat on October 28, 2022, before a football game. Along with a Trunk or Treat, they created a fun competition between clubs. They invited all clubs to come and decorate their cars in spooky decorations so that students would be able to vote and they could win a prize. However, the winner of this year’s Trunk or Treat sparked some controversy.

The objective was for each club to deck out their car in Halloween decorations and allow students to vote on which car was decorated the best. The winner of the competition was supposed to be based on how well the car was decorated and not what the club was based on. This led the student council to feel that the results were not accurate. The student council awarded the LGBTQ+ club their prize because they were the original winners. However, the Student council came together and personally gave another club $250. They felt they deserved to win too. 

“Voting was on Microsoft form. This allowed students to pick a club they thought was best,” senior student council member Kaitlyn Vigil stated.  

Vigil was able to give us a little more information on how the votes were conducted. The Microsoft form was intended to be a quick easy way for students to be able to vote. Discussing some changes to the form in the future, Vigil shared her thoughts.

“For Future years, we plan on changing the system to limit biased results. Myself was in four of those clubs, so in general voting became less about which car put in the most effort and more about the club the voter was in,” Vigil expressed.

With this in mind, Trunk or Treat shifted from a nonbias competition but became majorly influenced by which club students enjoyed being in more than others or which clubs they connected with better, instead of focusing on what the car looked like apart from the club they associated with.

When speaking to the head of the LGBTQ+ club, Mrs. Robson, expressed that the LGBTQ never intended to cause any problems with the Trunk or Treat. They simply went to the Trunk or Treat to represent their club and participate in the event. Robson explained that the Trunk or Treat led the club to receive a lot of hate and backlash because students felt they did not feel as if they should not have won.

The whole controversy was made extremely public when it should have been kept private between Student Council and the LGBTQ+ club. Since the event became so public, students began to over-exaggerate and add details that were not fully true to the story. 

“I have heard all sorts of different stories about the trunk or treat but have never heard the story be the exact same. I’m not exactly sure what even happened at this point because I have heard so many different things at this point,” sophomore Gabi Bean shared.

This is a prime example of what can happen when stories are blown out of proportion. The Trunk or Treat quickly became a he said, she said incident when in reality it could have been kept quiet. Since there was so much backlash directed towards the LGBTQ club, they would like to apologize to the student council for any issues that they may have caused.