The first annual Monster Ball will be held on Oct. 31 at the Center for Media Innovation (CMI).

The Halloween-themed event will take place from 2:30-4 p.m., and will feature the efforts of both students and faculty. Students are encouraged to come in costume, and Halloween treats will be offered.

According to a promotional flyer, the presentations will focus on “themes of monstrosity, terror, fear, the supernatural and more” and can range from anything from films to dance to art. 

A scavenger hunt will also take place before the Monster Ball, where students can dress up and find candy at different places on campus.

Jonas Prida, the assistant provost for curriculum, assessment and accreditation, said that the scavenger hunt will be a way for students to become more familiar with the different offices on campus.

“The library is one of the stops, student life is one of the stops, the registrar’s office, the Title IX office will all have candy or treats there,” Prida said. 

The scavenger hunt begins at 9 and ends at 2:30 as the Monster Ball begins.

According to Prida, there will also be a costume contest. To participate, students can take a photograph of themselves in costume and send it to the twitter address for the Center for Inclusive Excellence, which is @pointparkCIE.

Andrew Conte, director of the CMI, said that the Monster Ball is based off the literary arts symposium, which takes place in the spring. The literary arts department hosts the symposium and provides the opportunity for students of all majors to come together and share their work.

“My first experience with [the symposium] was this past year and I was like, ‘This is awesome, we should do it more often,’” Conte said in a phone interview on Tuesday.

Assistant literary arts professor, Jessica McCort, was involved in the planning of the Monster Ball, and stated that the goal is to have these types of events every month.

“Every month would be a different theme,” McCort said in an in-office interview on Thursday. “That’s our goal. So this month it’s Monster Ball, and in the month of November we would have a salon that’s oriented towards a different theme.”

McCort will also be a presenter at Monster Ball and will discuss her course Haunted America, which will take place during the spring semester.

According to McCort, the course looks at America “as a haunted landscape, and how that reveals different cultural anxieties and fears.”

The Monster Ball is designed as more of a roundtable discussion rather than a traditional presentation setting. Each presentation is allotted ten minutes and will include time for discussion and questions.

There is no strict structure for what can be submitted.

“We’re pretty open to pretty much anything that would fit with the theme,” McCort said.

Prida said that the goal of the Monster Ball is to bring students from different majors together to see what each other are doing.

“I think as more students know more students, it is incredibly helpful for the community at large,” Prida said. “And really it’s about eating candy.”