Student government, in conjunction with Raleigh officials, envision a new focus for Halloween on Hillsborough St. this year. The new focus will be to emphasize fun for all students (not just the bar-hopping 21-year-olds) and for that fun to focus more on giving back to the community.

The traditional Halloween celebration seems to be in a bit of trouble this year. With town planners in Chapel Hill planning to potentially cut down on services (like limiting alcohol sales and discontinuing park and ride to Franklin St., according to abclocal.go.com), the standard line ‘Let’s go to Chapel Hill’ may be in a bit of danger.

Even so, a poll on the Technician Web site shows 7% of responders (ahem turncoats) will be heading to Chapel Hill anyway.

However, Leigh Blinn, a junior in Mathematics Education and Hillsborough Hike coordinator, said this year’s festivities will revolve around giving back to the community.

“We just want to give back to the community,” Blinn said.

Blinn and the Hillsborough St. Commission have made plans for running a food drive during the celebration, dubbed the ‘I spooked hunger’ drive.

They are currently working to get a Brickyard permit to run the drive during the day on Halloween.

The locations for dropping off goods have not been established yet, but there will be more than one and will be announced soon.

Student Body President Jay Dawkins added that they were working on incentives for students that participate in the drive by bringing in cans.

“The big idea here is that in typical NC State fashion, students trick-or-treat backwards. Meaning that they’re taking food to the community. In exchange they’ll get a ‘I spooked hunger’ wristband that gets them specials at restaurants and bars,” Dawkins said.

While the planners are trying to line up specials on food for wristband-clad students, they will have to look elsewhere for alcohol-related specials.

“We’re trying to keep our name away from the alcohol. The discounts that we will hopefully be getting for the students will be food-related,” Blinn said.

Both Blinn and Dawkins were adamant that the focus for this year was not to attract a larger crowd to Hillsborough St., but rather to emphasize better decisions and more inclusive celebration for the student body.

“We’re not trying to make [Hillsborough St.] like Franklin St. at all,” Blinn said. “Franklin St. is expensive…we do want a lot of students to come because we want a lot of support the food drive that we’re running, but we don’t want to make it that bad.”

A poll on the Technician Web site shows that 74% of the responses favored closing down Hillsborough St. for the Hike. While this may be out of the scope for this year, rest assured, there will be plenty of fun on Hillsborough on Oct 31.