THE
Daily Egyptian SERVING THE SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY SINCE 1916.
DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2025
Poshard reads poetry, page 3
Beauty shop hits milestone, page 9
VOL. 109, ISSUE 7
Getting muddy in Murphy, page 11
‘Recreating the atmosphere’: Halloween festival aims to bring back Carbondale spirit ANNALISE SCHMIDT ASCHMIDT@DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM
Carbondale will shut down the Strip on Oct. 24 for the Halloween Homecoming Music Street Festival, a celebration that brings together two of the city’s biggest traditions: SIU Homecoming and Halloween. The free, family-friendly event runs from 3 to 10 p.m. and features live music on two stages, food trucks, vendors, carnival games and a community-wide costume contest. Halloween celebrations in Carbondale have long been a defining part of the
city’s identity, though they’ve also been controversial. From the late 1970s through the 1990s, thousands of people crowded Illinois Avenue each year for parties, parades and concerts, often overwhelming police and city officials. By the early 2000s, ordinances restricting alcohol sales on Halloween weekend slowed the tradition, but the memories of packed streets and festival-like atmosphere remained. With The Strip being shut down for Halloween festivities for the first time since 1996, organizers said they hope this
year’s combined event will recapture some of that energy in a more communitycentered way. Headlining the night is St. Louisbased ska-punk-alt-rock group The Urge, known for their 1990s hits like “Jump Right In.” Also taking the main stage is Keller Williams Presents DeadPettyKellerGrass, a genre-bending project that reworks Grateful Dead and Tom Petty classics with bluegrass instrumentation. The parking lot stage will feature HALLOWEEN | 3
SIU Star Party brings the cosmos to the community
Ben Hozie, Adam See, and Adam Shumski (left to right), from Bodega, play for a live audience Sept. 26 2025 at Hangar 9 in Carbondale, Illinois. Daylin Williams|@photosbydaylin
Post-punk band Bodega rocks Carbondale Gives philosophy lecture at SIU, caps off global tour at Hangar 9
BRAYDEN GUY GUY@DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM
A man looks into a telescope as the sun sets Sept. 27, 2025 at the Southern Illinois Star Party in Carbondale, Illinois. Riley Sembler | @riley_sembler TREVOR JOHN TJOHN@DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM
On the evening of Sept. 27, more than 400 people — a mix of students, families and seasoned astronomers — gathered at the sprawling fields of the SIU Farms to share a view of the cosmos under the moonlit sky during the annual SIU Star Party. For some, like SIU Philosophy Professor Randall Auxier, such an event held a significance that went beyond simply looking through telescopes; it served as an antidote to a modern form of isolation. “For as long as there were humans, we lived with the Milky Way above us, until about 125 years ago, when the light on the ground occluded our vision,” Auxier wrote in an email interview with The
Daily Egyptian. “Now our stories are left to experts. We don’t feel qualified to tell a story about the universe without technical training ... it makes the earth lonely. But I feel less lonely when I think about the shared night sky,” Auxier said. From the moment it began, the event was buzzing. At one table, STEM Education researchers helped children build models of the Earth and moon. At another, glow sticks were given out, creating crisscrossing paths of light in the growing twilight. For the student organizers, this energy was the payoff for six months of hard work in preparation. “I love working in production,” said Brooklyn Lewis, a junior in SIU’s cinema program who helped
manage the event. “It’s fun to collaborate with people ... a lot of working parts like this make a whole big thing.” Her colleague, cinema senior Kyleia Glass, agreed. “This is a good, real-life learning experience that’s outside of class,” she said. The event wasn’t just for university students. A group from the Saluki Entrepreneur Corps, which mentors college entrepreneurs, was also in attendance. “We are here to volunteer,” said Noah Nekic, PR & Marketing Chair in the Saluki Entrepreneur Corps. “This is really cool. The big Earth is awesome.” As darkness fell, the main event began. Lines formed behind dozens COSMOS | 12
The Brooklyn-based post-punk art rock band Bodega ended its global tour in Carbondale with a performance on Friday, Sept. 26 at Hangar 9. The band gave a lecture on the philosophy behind their music and art in Morris Library on Thursday evening. Bodega received a DIY cardboard ATM from the philosophy department that would be behind them on stage during their performance at Hangar 9. ATMs are symbolically significant in the band’s records, songs and artwork. After arriving from opening for the Viagra Boys in Montreal, Canada, Bodega members Ben Hozie, Nikki Belfiglio and Adam See gave the Daily Egyptian an exclusive interview at Hangar 9 on Wednesday, Sept. 24. The band said they were interested in lecturing on campus when SIU philosophy faculty reached out to them about the opportunity. Bassist See also had a personal interest in visiting the campus. “I have a special connection with this philosophy department, not that I have ever been here before, but my favorite philosopher is John Dewey,
and they have the Dewey Archives here,” See said. “I’m not even sure I would be the same person I am today if it wasn’t for that particular philosopher, so I have always wanted to come here.” Vocalist and percussionist Belfiglio said that coming to a college campus was a unique opportunity to reach a wider audience. “The 50-, 60- and 70-year-olds are still our biggest fan base to this day, but we know there are young people who would really relate to what we are doing,” Belfiglio said. “But how do we reach them, because we can’t rely on the algorithm to reach people? We don’t want to stand with the algorithm. We want to actually go out there and speak to people ourselves.” Post-punk, as defined by vocalist and guitarist Hozie, is influenced by philosophy, literature and fine art. “The term (post-punk) has lost a lot of meaning,” Hozie said. “I think a lot of bands that are called postpunk now are not even remotely punk. Punk isn’t a sound. It’s an attitude. At the very basic level, it has to be against the status quo.” BODEGA | 6