Sami Nukta

Contestants stand around the Nobel Courtyard to be judged for the “Best Overall” costume. “I didn’t expect that [many] people to be there, but it was really cool, and I got to see a lot of costumes,” Kuppusamy said.

The Student Government Association (SGA) held its second annual Halloween costume contest on Oct. 31 during lunch. In the Nobel Courtyard, over 40 students showed off their costumes for an opportunity to win gift cards.

Judged by members of SGA, the contest was broken down into four separate categories: Best Overall, Best DIY, Best Scary, and Best Group. Each of the category winners won Amazon Gift Cards provided by SGA.

“We also talked about what prizes we should be giving, and we decided on Amazon gift cards. After that, we needed to buy the Amazon gift cards, so me being the treasurer, I had to send a purchase order to the school so they could actually buy the gift cards,” junior SGA treasurer Andrew Wang said.

Before the contest, students were quick to make their predictions. Junior Kaiden Kerkulah, one of the winners in the Best DIY category, had high expectations that she and her partner would win, thanks to their hard work in making their costumes.

“After we saw everyone else’s costumes we were like, ‘oh yeah, we’re gonna win,'” said Kerkulah. “We tried really hard, I think that’s how we knew we were gonna win.”

Students competed for a variety of reasons. Many students competed to win the title of their category and gift cards.

“We wanted to win money,” said Kerkulah. “We were already going to do a group costume, so we may as well go all out.”

As opposed to competing for the prize or title, other students, such as freshman Vale Kuppusamy, one of the contenders for Best Overall, competed just to see others’ costumes.

“I thought it would just be fun. I didn’t enter it just to win, I just wanted to see other people’s costumes,” Kuppusamy said.

SGA has plans to adjust future costume contests to increase student involvement in the judging.

“For the next costume contest, SGA definitely wants more student involvement in the judging part so we can have a more popular vote, so we’re looking towards releasing Google Forms to the whole school so they can pick for themselves, instead of letting SGA and the teachers select them,” Wang said.