Working@Duke’s Halloween Photo Contest Winner Is…

Guess who won Working@Duke’s 5th annual Blue Devil Halloween photo contest?

Taking a cue from the popular board game, Guess Who?, 11 staff from the Pratt School of Engineering’s Professional Masters Programs posed as the game’s characters, complete with frames to place around each of their faces. Despite the theme, plenty of people knew who they wanted to vote for, as the photo tallied 522 votes to win the grand prize in the contest. 

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The idea was thought up by Vigor Lam and Lorelle Babwah, who decided to stick to a theme of games after the department captured the top spot in last year’s contest by dressing up and posing as a game of dominos. Thirteen staff members dressed up as Guess Who? characters, each making matching T-shirts and laser cut wooden frames with names on them. 

“Our group is big, so it can be hard to find costumes for a lot of people, but we all really cared about it,” said Babwah, student services coordinator for Professional Masters Programs. 

As the grand prize winner, the group will receive coffee mugs decorated with the team’s wining contest photo.

The Graduate School staff submitted this photo of coworkers dressed as Wizard of Oz characters.

The Graduate School went neck and neck for the contest’s top spot, falling short with a total of 345 votes. Even still, the group of 18 was selected by the Working@Duke editorial team as the “most creative” for dressing up as a variety of characters from The Wizard of Oz, from members of the Munchkin’s Lollipop Guild to Dorothy and a flying monkey.

Along with coworkers Lisa Wioskowski and Aurora Edenhart-Pepe, Nicki Rivers started planning the office-wide dress up on Oct. 20, encouraging colleagues to make costumes for the Friday before Halloween, when the school hosted graduate student parents and their kids for games and trick or treating.

“Doing this brings us together in a way that goes beyond just working in the same building, but enjoying each other in a fun, social way,” said Rivers, staff assistant for The Graduate School. “It cements our relationships.”

The “spookiest” photo award from the editorial team went to Tracy Bethel, a program manager with Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She poked fun of her 37-week pregnancy by sticking two baby doll hands out of her shirt and submitting a caption asking, “Do I still need to verify my dependent for Duke Open Enrollment?”

Tracy Bethel shared this image of her costume with baby hands poking out from her shirt.

Bethel noted the spookiest part of her outfit couldn’t even come through in her photo. She hid a sound effect box from the baby doll in her pants, and when activated, it would emit the sound of a baby’s laugh.

“I might have interrupted a meeting or two with a baby laughing,” she said. 

Both of the spookiest and creative winners received bags of chocolate candy.

To view all of the submissions to this year’s Blue Devil Halloween Photo Contest, visit the Working@Duke Facebook photo album.