Believe it or not, Nichols College is haunted. Right before Halloween, Ghost Hunter Chris Fleming came to campus and confirmed it. The event freaked me out.

In the first part, Chris gave a presentation about his life as a ghost hunter and his experiences in this spooky profession. Later, he had all of us (there were about 50 people at the event in Fels) put our names on a piece of paper and put the names in a bucket. These were the people whom Chris would choose to take on the ghost hunt. Now, I’m not too keen on ghost hunting. But my roommate is and really wanted to go on the hunt. We put our names in. I told her if my name got picked and hers didn’t, that she could take my place. Both of us were called so off I went.

We started off the hunt at Fels because Chris believed there was definitely something paranormal there, and lo and behold, he was right! There apparently is a lot of paranormal activity in Fels.

As my friends and I stood outside of Fels, we all looked at each other as we felt like something was behind us. We asked Chris to consult his ‘spirit box’ and check if someone was behind us. Right away an answer came out of the spirit box, “yes.” I freaked out. We then asked the spirit box what my friend was wearing on her head and it said “white hat.” My friend then asked if the spirit’s name was Charlie, and he answered with yes.

As it turns out, Charlie is my friend’s ghost. It follows her around. Crazy, I know, but true. She played the Ouija board game one night and Charlie never left her. Apparently, Charlie is also always in our room, thus ensuring I will never sleep again.

We moved on to Academy Hall where Chris found three ghosts. He contacted the spirits through the box. The man ghost would not allow the others to talk to us. He kept telling us to “get out” and he even swore at us a couple times. At this point, I really wanted to leave, but we stayed on.

When we finally left we took a group picture with Chris Fleming. A little later when everyone got back from the ghost hunt people told me that I missed it. I wasn’t too sure I wanted to know but I asked, “Missed what?”

Apparently when they were all walking past Conrad they looked at the top floor and all the lights turned on. Some of my friends say they saw a woman’s face. Later that night, I went to N&J’s ; when I came back the lights were still on. So I pointed at the building to a friend and as soon as I pointed all of the lights turned off.

Honestly, this whole ghost-hunting idea completely freaks me out and I am still not entirely sure why I went. Now I am officially done with ghost hunting and will never do it again.

October, as everyone knows, is breast cancer awareness month. On October 28^th Nichols had a “Pink Out.” The Center for Student Involvement sold awesome pink t-shirts for $5.00 that said, “Get your pink on.” Everyone who wished to participate gathered in front of Academy Hall. We took a group picture in the shape of the pink breast cancer ribbon.

It was amazing to see all the people who came out to be in the picture and support the cause. When I was talking to my friends, they said there were more people this year than last year. The amount of people that showed up is what really made the event and the ribbon a little more remarkable than last year. The picture came out great as most of us had the same color pink on, which really made the ribbon look amazing. Hopefully next year we can get an even bigger turn out and make a larger ribbon.

Seeing this was breathtaking because most people have been affected by breast cancer in some way. Someone that is very close to me had breast cancer. Luckily it was found early, and she did everything in her power to stop the cancer. I believe it was this summer that she was clear and the doctors told her she was cancer free. It was such a relief to learn this. Some people may not have stories that end like that, but to see the support from everyone was inspiring. Almost everyone in the world is affected by some type of cancer or disease, whether you personally or a close loved one or friend. It is something to take seriously, but most often brings people together, just like at Nichols. Cancer has greatly affected my family, and I have sadly lost many to it. I took part in the Pink Out event to help the cause so one day loved ones will not lose the battle.

Ben Simon, who is the founder of Food Recovery Network, had a dream to become a great football player, and when that failed he decided to put his efforts into something else. Junior year of high school he joined a club called the social action club. One day he decided to start a protest at his high school because of the genocide in Darfur. The protest worked, and this was his first step to his development of becoming a leader. He said, “If my protest worked then shit, what else can I do?”

When he attended the University of Maryland he tried to start a website called mymaryland.net. He invested $80,000 in it, but the effort was a failure. However, this did not stop him from trying to start something else. When he was sitting in the dining hall one day he noticed that all the extra food from that day was just being thrown away. Witnessing this sparked an idea, and he decided to do something about it.

He developed a program to take the leftover food to local shelters and created a way to get the food from point A to point B. This was the start to The Food Recovery Network. He wanted to start these efforts at other colleges too so he called up his friend from Brown University and soon people started talking. Now Food Recovery Network is working in 100 different colleges around the US.

This was one of the most interesting events I have attended so far this year. He made it fun and very informative. Here at Nichols we are trying to start the Food Recovery Network, and I decided to join the group of students who will be a part of it. We will take food from the dining hall at the end of the day and bring it to a shelter, possibly in Webster. As a freshman, I wanted to join so I could be a part of the college’s efforts to help the local communities. I am excited to see the progress in the next three and a half years. This is an extremely important program because, on average, there is so much food that goes to waste and there are 1 in 6 Americans that are hungry. Now we can do something about it.

It was mandatory for freshman to attend because of our Learning to Lead class. Ben talked to us about how to become a good leader and some characteristics of being a good leader. He discussed that to be a good leader you have to fail and that failing is not a bad thing. He used his examples of failure to prove his point. He could not become a football player because he hurt his shoulder and if that did not happen there probably wouldn’t be a Food Recovery Network. When he tried to start up the website mymaryland.net he failed, but he said he would not trade that for the world. “Embrace failure, fail forward,” he said.