'Deck the Halls' gives faculty opportunity to show school spirit

By Alex Parker

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The holidays are still two months away, but Bailey DeReus is encouraging students and staff to deck the halls a bit early this year.

DeReus, Des Moines, Iowa, senior, is in charge of the Deck the Halls competition, a homecoming event where residence halls and campus offices are draped in KU spirit. DeReus is community and campus outreach chairwoman for the homecoming committee.

“It’s a really great way to have some fun and encourage some Jayhawk spirit for the week and hopefully have a lot of people participate,” DeReus said.

This is the first year that resident and scholarship halls can compete against each other for points in the homecoming competition. The residence hall competition is separate from the student life group competition. Other events that earn residence hall points include Stuff the Bus and the daily events.

Because Deck the Halls is an event solely for residence and scholarship halls, student life groups are not able to earn points, even if members live in and help decorate a participating residence hall. DeReus said participants could work together to create themes for each building or floor, but should not spend more than $175 on decorations. The only stipulations are that the decorations must be in a commons area and should encompass this year’s homecoming theme, Jayhawk Nation.

DeReus said that residence halls could begin decorating the weekend before Homecoming Week. The winners receive 100 points toward the overall Homecoming Week competition. Second place wins 75 points and the third place residents win 50 points. Every participating resident or scholarship hall automatically receives 25 points just for taking part in the event. Halls also receive bonus points for having as many floors participate as possible, DeReus said.

For the past several years the All Scholarship Hall Council has paired up men’s and women’s scholarship halls to decorate the facades of their buildings. This is the first year that the council is banding together to decorate the Crawford Center, the newly renovated gathering place for scholarship students.

Brena Bessa, Manaus, Brazil, junior, said even though scholarship halls decorated their buildings in the past, they could never dream of competing with fraternities and sororities, which have more resources to devote to festooning their houses.

“It wasn’t really fair before, especially because we only have 50 students per hall,” said Bessa, programming director for the council and a resident of Watkins Hall.

There are 11 scholarship halls. This year, she said, “We just wanted to be involved and wanted to get ASHC involved.”

— Edited by Jeff Briscoe

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