Boo Crew, Saint Joseph’s University’s annual trick-or-treating event for local elementary school students, will not take place this year due to regulations regarding minors on campus.

The Minors on Campus Policy, which was adopted in 2012 and most recently updated April 2017, prohibits “Authorized Adults” who interact with minors on campus from doing so without completing background checks that include the Pennsylvania Criminal Record Search, the FBI Fingerprinting Check and the Pennsylvania Child Abuse Clearance.

After consulting with St. Joe’s legal counsel, the staff in the Office of Mission Programs, which sponsors the popular event, decided to end it.

“There is really no way to ensure that every person interacting with the children that come to our campus have clearances or not,” said Beth Ford McNamee, assistant director of Campus Ministry.

The university has sponsored Boo Crew for more than 20 years. Children from neighborhoods surrounding campus were invited to knock on doors in first-year residence halls and receive candy and other Halloween treats.

McNamee said the event was meant to offer children a safe space for trick-or-treating.

“People are more hesitant to send their kids out trick or treating wherever they live but particularly in neighborhoods where there’s higher incidents of violence,” McNamee said. “The idea was that kids have a safe place to go trick or treating on our campus.”

Jai Williams ’18, remembers trick-or-treating on St. Joe’s campus when he was younger.

“It is something I will always remember,” Williams said. “When I was young I never imagined myself being a student here at St. Joe’s.”

As part of the event, trick-or-treating children were chaperoned by St. Joe’s students who were encouraged to talk to the children about college.

Alim Young ’19 was shocked when he heard the university had cancelled the event, and said the chance for the kids, and their parents, to interact with college students was an important part of the event.

“They don’t get an opportunity to see a college campus every day,” Young said. “I feel like it’s an opportunity for their parents to see it too. You know, ‘this is what you can do.’ It yields great conversation afterward.”

McNamee said that this was the point of the program.

“It exposes the kids to what a college campus looks like if they never been on a college campus before,” McNamee said. “A lot of the schools we work with heavily emphasize goals of attaining a college education. It expands the imagination of the kids, like, ‘here is where I can potentially be one day.’”

McNamee explained that St. Joe’s students can still volunteer to be apart of Halloween parties at local schools, including Samuel Gompers, Gesu School, Holy Name School in Camden, New Jersey and other elementary schools in West Philadelphia.

The university will be donating candy and decorations to school parties, but that’s not the most important part, according to McNamee.

“What they value most, they said, is students’ presence,” she said. “The elementary school kids love college kids.”