With Halloween (a.k.a. the most important holiday in a college student’s life) just around the corner, I’m feeling concerned about my costume. Distressed about my disfraz. In the wise words of Tina Fey, “In Girl World, Halloween is the one day a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it.”

Halloweekend is coming and I’m so freaking excited for the best holiday of the year, but I’m having costume issues. What to wear, what’s relevant, what’s offensive?

It seems like every year we feel compelled to write this same editorial: Do not wear problematic costumes this Halloween.

For many Washington University students, hosting the presidential debate on campus meant engaging in political action and discourse. But for others, it was all about the cameras.

As we all know from Facebook, Halloween is just around the corner. Ah, what a lovely time to hang up spooky decorations, bake those Pillsbury Halloween-themed sugar cookies that definitely don’t taste like glorified construction paper and stockpile candy corn. Also, what a lovely time to not wear a racist/sexist/transphobic Halloween costume that undermines the personhood of marginalized individuals.

Halloween is nearly upon us, and for some of us—let’s be honest, a great majority of us—that means a last-minute scramble to find an easy Halloween costume. While many people think that means you have to rush to Target and shell out money on a lame, overdone costume like a witch or nurse, there are actually a lot of costumes that you can pull together from items you brought to college.

Washington University students may not dress up as ghosts and witches to trick or treat anymore, but between Bauhaus, Halloween-themed frat parties and other holiday shenanigans, there’s still ample opportunity for all of us to get a little creative with our costume choices this year.

In college it’s easy to fall into a Halloween costume rut—we’ve all seen our fair share of sexy policewomen and Where’s Waldos. But with so much going on in pop culture, there’s no excuse for slacking off in the costume department this year. Here are some suggestions for topical Halloween attire that would make Perez Hilton proud. 1.

While most Wash. U. students pride themselves on their intelligence and human decency, Halloween can be an exception to that rule. It’s a time to let loose, masquerade as someone or something you could never be in real life and hopefully impress everyone with your command of visual humor—assuming, of course, your parents aren’t coming into town. But there’s a line.

Somewhere between trick-or-treating and freshman year of high school we lost our innocence. Halloween evolved from a harmless night of Hershey overdosing and the possibility that the creepy guy down the street spiked his candy, to an all-out, weekend-long booze-fest highlighted by the presence of more skin than a weekend on Miami Beach.