As DGN heads into the holidays, festivities begin to pick up. Halloween introduces skull pop selling, students dress, and the annual pumpkin contest. But this year, DGN chose to open the pumpkin contest to students, in addition to each department. After the pumpkins were set in the front lobby, students were sent a google form on which they could vote for their favorite. 

The pumpkin choices spanned from painted faces to actual carving. But, the eventual winners were the Fine Arts pumpkin by Amy Benard and a Steve Harvey pumpkin made by seniors Meghan Maci, Samantha Neveril, Alyssa Venkus, and Ainsley Washburn. 

The ideas for pumpkins were all very different, so it was important to be creative. 

“We had a complicated idea for our pumpkin but we messed it up so we ended up just flipping it around and making it funny,” Maci said. 

The administration had the task of creating a different pumpkin from last year, which introduced another level of creativity. 

“Our pumpkin last year was awesome too! We had a white pumpkin with all sorts of artist tools and music collaged on the pumpkin and sticking out of the pumpkin. This year we went a little more scary and crazy, and it seemed to get more votes,” Bernard said. 

While the students’ ideas were fairly last minute, the Fine Arts pumpkin was almost the exact opposite. 

“Ms. Moran worked on it for a few hours and I worked on it for an hour and a half. So, probably 4-5 hours total,” Bernard said. 

Though the  pumpkin contest didn’t require campaigning or signs, the students decided to push for their pumpkin as much as they could. 

“At first we were sure we wouldn’t win because all the other pumpkins were so much better but we thought of how funny it would be for our pumpkin to win so during 5th period we printed out signs saying “vote for pumpkin #23” and walked around the school telling people to vote for our pumpkin,” Maci said. “We also held the sign during passing periods and told our classes about it for the rest of the day.” 

The choice to open to students was seemingly successful and will continue next year.