As Halloween quickly approaches, the editorial staff of The Collegian would like to make a small request of students and faculty: leave your costumes at home.

Don’t get us wrong — The Collegian editorial staff does not consist of a handful of killjoys, jaded and bitter toward the candy-corniest holiday of the year. Many of us have been and will be participating in various Halloween-related activities.

Some of us will even be dressing up, but we plan to leave that until after the sun sets.

In the realm of work, dressing up seems to us less festive than it does unprofessional. In the school setting, seeing classmates and professors dressed up is at best surreal and at worst, outright tacky.

Particularly for students, costumes tend toward the extremes and are often either so eccentric as to prove a distraction to the academic environment, or, especially with women’s costumes, are a bit too risqué for the classroom.

Maybe you think there’s something to be gained from your professors and bosses being able to see up your skirt. We don’t — it just makes things uncomfortable.

Additionally, taking notes becomes more difficult when your view of the white board is obscured because the person in front of you insists on wearing his wizard̢۪s cap to class.

By all means, go all out in the evening. Do up your hair and makeup, don your scariest mask and wear your lowest-cut blouse.

But during the day, the real treat for us would be business as usual.