The hotly contested pumpkin painting contest left many questioning the results of the election, with Aimee’s Advisory’s “Carole’s Lost and Found Graveyard” beating out “Robespierre Est Mort,” from Calina’s Advisory. Emotions ran high, and as a doctor of journalism, it was my obligation to break the story on just how people felt (months ago, at the end of October).
I woke up in a haze of confusion, the early light playing through the blinds of my office. A mournful saxophone wailed in the hazy morning, and day-old cigarette smoke drifted lazily in the ceiling fan, the gray rivulets playing through the thermals of the office like the River Lethe, a curling, wispy thing with no beginning or end, just twists and turns, and one too many loose ends to track the start.
As I started the morning with a cup of coffee, I reflected on the languishing article lying on the in-tray, burning a hole in the back of my head like a kerosene-soaked rag in a bottle of proof 100. What were these pumpkins? Who judged them, and on what? I needed answers, and the only way I could find them was going to the source. That person was none other than Sofie Wilson ’23, of Calina’s advisory.
She squinted at me from across the table. “Well,” she said in response to the question of who conceived of and executed the pumpkin, “It was mostly Simon [Listiak ’23] and I. Leah helped a little, the rest of the advisory was… there.” Her derision was palpable. “We decided to do a decapitated head. And we decided to get a little more specific, with Robespierre. We do have Robespierre’s decapitated body as well. And, obviously,” she laughed, “if we’re going to have Robespierre’s decapitated head and body, we’re going to need a guillotine too. So I built a guillotine. A working guillotine.” I didn’t care to find out if it worked on more than just pumpkins. She continued, “But in the contest, we got second place, which is an injustice. The winning pumpkin was good, but it didn’t deserve first place, because it was just a pumpkin. The third place pumpkin, they built a dog, and the second place pumpkin- we built a Guillotine. Did I mention that the guillotine worked?” She had no more to say. She stood and as she left the room, she left me with a burning question: If the guillotine was undeniably the best, how did it get second place? I smelled corruption in the deciding committee.
I knew I had to see the scene of the body. Take photos. The following images contain scenes of hardcore revolutionary pumpkin violence, biased quality assessment, and the cursed language of Fr*nch. If you have small children reading this article, well, keep them reading, because they’re about to learn some hard truths about the world.
I made it my mission to interview members of the sophomore community about the subject of potential bias in the pumpkin contest, starting with Gus Pompa ’25. I asked Pompa if he thought the Halloween pumpkin contest was fair. Pompa voiced concerns over the legitimacy of the process, saying: “No, the seniors rigged it! The committee is filled with seniors, have you ever thought about how the seniors win everything?”
Perhaps he was confused about the committee I was speaking of. I meant the committee that decided the winning pumpkin, which, according to Calina’s Advisory advisor Calina Ciobanu, was made up of “the admin I think.”
Justice doesn’t always come to the deserving. The travesty occurred months ago and still the wronged advisory goes unacknowledged by the administration. The trail is cold, the hot hours have passed, but tensions still run high. So don’t pump the brakes. Instead, squash your trepidations, and ask: Was the pumpkin gourd enough?
