All Hill Halloween a treat for kids

Though he’s only in the fifth grade, visiting UCLA for the
16th annual All Hill Halloween on Wednesday was nothing new for
Anthony Diaz. Diaz has often visited his mother, Ana Guerrero, who
works as a housekeeper in Rieber Hall.

After finishing work at 3:30 that afternoon, Guerrero drove home
to help her son prepare his costume, only to head back to UCLA on a
school bus with dozens of children several hours later.

“It’s more safe, and more organized, too,”
Guerrero said in Spanish about the benefits of her son
trick-or-treating at UCLA’s Dykstra Hall.

Each year, All Hill Halloween invites over 2,500 students from
low-income areas of Los Angeles to come together and trick-or-treat
safely among the decorated floors of UCLA’s residence
halls.

Diaz is a student at Coliseum Street Elementary, a school
situated on the border of two very different neighborhoods. On one
side of the school are blocks of suburban-style homes. The other
side is the Jungle ““ a complex of apartments with an infamous
reputation in the neighborhood.

“There’s a lot of gang members, gang
activity,” said Rose Mencias, site coordinator for LA’s
BEST.

BEST, an after-school program started by UCLA alumnus and former
mayor of Los Angeles Tom Bradley, is responsible for organizing the
trip.

“It’s not safe to just go door to door, especially
in the Jungle,” she said.

With safety issues in mind, many area parents opt to take their
children to other neighborhoods for trick-or-treating.

“Usually I go over to my auntie’s house,” said
fifth-grader Dagney Flores. “Sometimes I go to my rich
auntie’s house. She lives in Hollywood.”

Flores, who was dressed as the villain from the movie
“Scream,” lives in the Jungle.

“It’s not safe. Where I live, it’s not
safe,” she said.

Fellow fifth-grader Kalalah Harvey said her father takes her to
Norwalk to go trick-or-treating.

“Where I live, it’s peaceful, but around the corner,
stuff happens. I don’t know what kinds of stuff, but you can
hear sirens and a helicopter,” Harvey said.

Not all of Coliseum’s students are able to seek out a
safer trick-or-treating spot in another neighborhood.

“A lot of kid’s parents don’t have cars to
take them trick-or-treating,” Mencias said. “So UCLA,
for some, is all they have.

“I think it’s wonderful, because it’s safer
for them than to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhoods. … You
could just be walking down the street and get shot,” she said
of the dangers in the neighborhood surrounding the school.

Despite the fact that they are only 10 years old, many of
Coliseum’s fifth graders said they would like to go to
college some day.

“Sometimes when kids are at UCLA, you want to go there,
but it’s too crowded. It’s kinda too hard to get
in,” said fifth-grader Imani McDonald, describing her take on
UCLA’s competitiveness.

For Flores, whose brother opted to enter the Army instead of
going to school, college is something she’s looking forward
to.

“We had a substitute and she taught us about all these
different colleges and what you have to do,” she said.

Guerrero said there was an academic incentive for the kids, as
only the best students were allowed to come to UCLA on Wednesday
night.

“It’s a good thing because they are studying more in
class,” Guerrero said.

Students were informed a week before the event of who would be
attending, which Guerrero said helped show the students the
benefits of having good attendance and being well behaved.

All Hill Halloween is also important to UCLA students.

“It’s really integrating UCLA with L.A.,” said
Evan Shulman, a first-year pre-psychology student who volunteered
as a tour guide. “It’s good to see you really have that
community support from the university.”

Second-year and Dykstra Hall President Bradley Ostrander
described his favorite part of the evening: “To see them come
here and be excited about it. To see them walk away
happy.”