Despite requiring me to wear an infuriatingly bright-pink and scratchy wristband that has kept me up all week, the prospect of joining the engineering pie-squad was too delicious an opportunity to pass up.
Every year around Mar. 14-or for geeks, 3.14-the engineers run
their annual pieing fund-raiser. Through the last three days of the week, students venturing over to the Engineering Students’ Society may pony up five bucks to have the engineers pie their friends. All that is required is the money, a name, the room number and time for the victim to be located and they will be pied.
The pies are basically shells containing cream filling-all the better to cover people with. Though chocolate is popular, the best to get people with is coconut, as it leaves little chunks all over. Indeed, Pi Week is glorious, but it has detractors.
Some professors get angry because it disrupts their class. Understandable, but as pie week only comes but once a year and the pie squad always waits until the end of class, there is really very little that profs should be stressing about, unless they’re the ones who are going to need the paper towel.
The other problem is with students refusing to participate. Some don’t want to mess up their makeup, or their hair, or their “pink eye,” so they claim. But really, this shouldn’t be happening. If you’ve gone to the trouble of applying makeup or combing your hair, you’ve put some effort into affecting what other people will think of you, via your outside appearance. Why not get pied, then? This will make you look real cool, in that laid back, “I’m okay with a prank” sort of way. And if you do have pink eye, you shouldn’t be at school anyways, sickie.
If there is some legitimate reason that you must not be pied-for instance, deathly allergies-then at least still participate. For an additional five dollars, you can redirect the pie to someone else. This is a great opportunity to play a joke on your friends, because, man, people look silly with pie all over their faces.
The proceeds go to charity and even the Students’ Union executive is getting pied this year, so there is no reason not to join in the riotous fun.
Students frequently complain about the lack of community on campus. There can surely be no better way to incite this than hittin’ people in the face with a pie. Keep an eye out, I might be in your class tomorrow with a coconut cream.