Fall is a season of change. Outfits get warmer while the weather gets cooler. Pumpkin food comes back, everything from pumpkin spice to pumpkin seeds. Apple cider and apple cider doughnuts can be found at virtually every grocery store. The holiday season approaches with Halloween and Thanksgiving getting closer. The earliest hints of Christmas even start to appear. One of the best parts of fall, however, is the amount of free candy we get.

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Even before Halloween, it seems like everyone is giving away candy for one reason or another. Wandering campus, you’re all but guaranteed to run into candy somewhere, whether it’s from a student organization tabling in the Student Center, your advisor’s office or even from your friend’s bag of candy bought at the cafe.

There’s something nice about free candy. While I could go out and, as a legal adult, buy as much candy as I wanted, free candy is just more fun.

You don’t choose what candy you get, meaning you’re exposed to candies you might not otherwise eat. Free candy is also given by someone, so you get a connection to a person, too. Plus, taking one or two pieces of free candy keeps me from buying, and subsequently eating, enough candy to want to explode.

At Monday’s career fair, I judged the quality of the different companies’ booths on the candy they had to offer. Sure, the quality of the jobs they represented was a factor, but doesn’t a stand with candy in front of it sound so much better than one offering yet another pen with a logo on it? Free candy enticed me to speak with potential employers. Isn’t that better than going to Target and buying a bag of Snickers?

Unfortunately, most college students do not fully appreciate the greatest day for free candy: Halloween. We may celebrate it by dressing up with our roommates and posting pictures of our creative costumes on social media, but we’ve forgotten the true meaning of Halloween: getting as much free candy from strangers as possible.

I call for a return to trick-or-treating. Put candy on your door. Dress up as a sexy version of some timely character (I’ve heard Ken Bone is especially popular this year). Wander campus, North Haven and even Hamden in a quest for fun-sized candy bars. Or just go buy some discounted bags of candy on Nov. 1. That works, too. -G.Amill