California Lutheran University will be hosting monthly outdoor movie nights on campus for the rest of fall semester.

“I’m thankful that Student Life tried to produce that in-person activity but yet was socially distanced,” said Grayson Hatter, sophomore at Cal Lutheran and Pederson Hall Resident Assistant. “Black Panther was playing, which is a great movie, and also it was kind of the timing for it; it was good in remembering Chadwick Boseman.”

The first monthly movie night in September featuring Black Panther, was held in Kingsmen Park and Uyeno Ampitheatre and was only open to Pederson Hall residents.

“So right now the events are limited to currently enrolled students that are living on campus and then we might be hosting one for commuters in November as well,” Jaime Faucher, assistant director of Student Life, said.

The next movie night will be in October and feature a Halloween movie.

“At the next event we will actually be handing out picnic blankets to students to encourage physical distancing even more so they will get a free picnic blanket to put on and the picnic blankets are kind of like 6 feet by 6 feet,” Faucher said.

Student Life employees coordinate which movies will play and what goodies will be available for students at the monthly event.

“[At] the last one we offered small personal pizzas so we went and picked up pizzas in advance and they were personalized so each student got a box,” Faucher said.

Faucher and Andrea Layne, Director of Student Life, came up with the concept for this socially-distanced activity.

“These monthly movie nights are new this year, but Student Life has definitely put on movies in the park, Kingsmen park, for a long time. Last year we did a couple and the year before that,” said Student Life’s Coordinator for Student Involvement, Cambria Teter.

In order to host the event during the pandemic, “we’re just following the guidelines and the regulations that we’ve been told in terms of limiting the groups size to no more than 20,” Faucher said. “This year we are trying to come up with an option that would be safe … for students to attend and that we could advertise to specifically residence halls to keep them by residence halls.”

Future movie nights may be open to multiple residence halls. Teter said RAs will have the most up-to-date information regarding the events.