The River Campus Libraries host their Scare Festival the weekend before Halloween every year. This year’s pirate theme has students follow the “x” marked on the map to collect enough stamps to climb the infamous Rush Rhees bell tower.
The festival, which was first started in 1998, is aimed at helping to promote the River Campus’ library system — specifically the many smaller spaces around campus like the POA or Robbins.
According to event coordinator Claudia Pietrzak, the project was started to help educate students on how to find books in the “spooky” stacks.
Library staff also host the tower tour at the festival, during which staff guide students through the winding staircase and help students through a window all the way to the top of Rush Rhees.
Pietrzak said that coordinating the tower tour is one of the hardest logistical elements of the event. Staff undergo a brief training session to learn everything from how to guide students to the top to what to do if something were to go wrong.
To be able to see the views from the top of Rush Rhees, students must first complete a scavenger hunt that involves collecting stamps, completing library trivia, and visiting each library on the River Campus.
“The tower tour is not for you if you don’t like tight spaces or heights,” Pietrzak said. “It’s a 1930s building, so it’s pretty inaccessible […] I wish everybody could do it but not every[one can] […] You literally have to walk out a window.”
