This weekend, while some people are hurriedly ordering last-minute costumes online and making multiple trips to EV1, others will be wrapped up in giving their parents a rousing tour of Deering library.

Halloween falls right in the middle of Family Weekend this year. This might deter some of us from getting completely trashed off spiked pumpkin punch and making out with all seven dwarfs. For those who still have a liver to sacrifice, fear not. Despite the presence of people over forty, you can still try to lose it this weekend.

Communication sophomore Havah Smith’s parents can’t make it to Family Weekend this year but she’ll play host to her fifteen-year-old sister. She plans to take her out with her wherever she goes — including at least one bar night, because, she says, “She can handle it. Maybe better than I can.”

Do we really need barely-matured teenyboppers to round out our revelries? Or do we subscribe to the attitude of the more, the merrier? When it comes to parents, it seems to be the latter.

Dave Collins, a Communication senior, enjoys seeing friends’ parents at parties, especially when his mom can’t make it into town to help him win at beer pong.

“I played flip cup with my roommate’s parents and it was hilarious,” he says. “Old people are surprisingly good at flip cup.”

After all, parents were our age once. Most understand that the overachieving student who lost sleep organizing Toys for Tots drives in high school is now staying out late to shotgun Miller Lights in someone’s basement.

But for the unlucky faction who got screwed with parents who come into town wanting to know every aspect of your life at college — all the studying you do on Saturday night — here’s how to deal on Halloween:

1. Suddenly develop a cough. “Say it’s nothing serious, and you need rest so you can have a good last day with them,” Weinberg freshman Resh Patel suggests. They won’t want you to be out-of-commission when you could be giving them a walking tour of your classes the next day, and God forbid you contracted the swine. Turning in early to ward off illness will force them back to the Hotel Orrington, giving you time to slide on your lone white glove and red vinyl pants and beat it all the way to the nearest party.
2. “Play up the NU geekiness,” says Communication freshman Dan DeSalva. Parents want to believe they’re putting that fifty grand to good use. Prove to them you take your education seriously. “We don’t even know it’s Halloween!” DeSalva says. If they wonder why midterms are later than usual, blame it on the “crazy quarter system.”
3. “Spend as much time with them as possible,” says McCormick freshman Zak Carlsgaard — but only during the day. Show them everything, and start early: what it’s like to wake up for your earliest class, all the reading you get to do, the Rock, where your econ professor lives, the El, Jamba Juice, the Norris bookstore, waiting in the stir fry line at Sargent. Parents are old, and they’ll be ready to pass out way before you pregame.
4. Bring them with you. “Make up a silly family costume theme you can all wear,” Collins says. Even if your parents weren’t cool in high school, they might totally love the chance to regress back to their college years. Just make sure your parents’ costumes are appropriate — no one wants to see their MILF making out with a frat guy.

Even if none of these work, there will always be other chances to get wasted in costume. “To be honest, I’d rather be with them,” Medill sophomore David Hovar says. “It’s Parents’ Weekend after all.”