Members of the Choate community get in the Halloween spirit by carving pumpkins. Photo by Ryan Kim/The Choate News
The leaves change color. The air gets chillier. Halloween decorations appear on front yards. And pumpkins and apples ripen for the picking. Most Choate students are accustomed to these characteristics of a New England fall. Unique to the Choate community, however, is the annual fall festival that brings the campus to life with games, activities, and food galore. This past Sunday, October 21, Choate celebrated its 32nd annual HarvestFest on Memorial Field.
This year, 15 student clubs and organizations ran booths selling food, from caramel apples and pumpkin cheesecake muffins to Jamaican beef patties and Mexican corn on the cob. Other clubs ran activities such as pumpkin carving and face painting. The Choate DJ Association buoyed the event with music. The festival, said Mr. Jim Yanelli, Director of Student Activities, “is a nice way for clubs who have been working together since the beginning of the school year to actually do something as a group, to have the leadership to organize an event, and to execute their well-thought-out plans for their particular booth.”
Erica Vandenbulcke ’20 was excited for HarvestFest: “Last year, I had an event that clashed with HarvestFest,” she said. “This year, I really wanted to go, just to experience what it is because everyone always gets hyped up about it.”
HarvestFest aims, in part, to bring the community together and to highlight the identities of the diverse array of Choate’s student-run clubs. While students purchase tickets to exchange for food and activities, nobody makes money off HarvestFest. “There aren’t really club proceeds, per say,” explained Mr. Yanelli. “Each club sells their particular food item at below what we pay for it. What we do is award each club that participates a share of the funds that they generate in ticket sales, but the SAC generally underwrites it.” He added, “When you think about all the food and labor and decorations and everything else that goes into it, it’s definitely not a money-making enterprise.”
The tradition of HarvestFest began 32 years ago, in 1986, when Mr. Yanelli, along with a group of students, were, in his words, “looking for a way of celebrating what is a beautiful time of year here in New England.” He went on, “It’s just a nice punctuation mark in the fall term. It generally happens just before Parents’ Weekend and after midterms. The apple and pumpkin picking at Lyman Orchards has always preceded the day so that we get apples to bake into pie or the pumpkins that get carved at HarvestFest. That’s kind of a nice lead-in to the event.”
Students seemed to possess a general air of enthusiasm about the event. Sarah Stern ’21 and Carolina Vargas ’21 noted their favorite parts of HarvestFest last year, complimenting the food, bouncy house, and face painting. On what they looked forward to most about attending the festival for a second time, at the same time, they both said, “The food!”
According to Mr. Yanelli, HarvestFest changes every year based on the “proclivities of the student leaders.” Years ago, when the festival took place on the patio between the old Student Activities Center and the Larry Hart Pool, he explained, “We worked with Facilities to cut down young saplings in full color and tie them to the railings as decorations. It looked like a little park. It was really cool.”
As much as HarvestFest may have evolved over the last three decades, its purpose holds true: an opportunity for the community to spend time together, support each other’s organizations, engage in lighthearted fall activities, and indulge in some good food.
