Halloween Timing

A couple of weeks ago I was talking with some students about the funk that our chapter was in. The student drew the parallel with the stock market: people get upset or nervous or worried about what’s going on and then act in ways that perpetuate (or help create in the first place) the negative trends that then cause more anxiety, and the beat goes on.

And so, like a well-timed Fed prime rate cut, Halloween came this past Friday to Chapel Hill. And our IV community did our second-annual Halloween Pancake house. The idea is simple: cook tons of pancakes, set up a large tent on campus, feed people until the food runs out.

Last year we cooked around 1,200-1,600 pancakes and fed somewhere around 600-700 students. IV students loved it. UNC students (both intoxicated and non-intoxicated) loved it. Administrators loved it. They contacted me two weeks ago to make sure that we were doing it again.

This year we cooked 3,000 pancakes. We served roughly 900 students. And my IV students were rock-stars. There were tons of freshmen that I had never met before who cooked, came early to set up, stayed late to break-down. There were a couple of senior women, Ashley, Ashley and Leslie, who were there just about the entire night. Senior women, giving up their entire Halloween night to serve pancakes. You can’t coach that.

IV students lined the brick walkways cheering for folks as they made their way to walk up and down Franklin Street, THE Carolina thing to do on Halloween night. We played sweet music, had lots of hot chocolate available, my co-staff walked a couple of drunk people back to their dorms.

One of the senior women overheard someone say, “InterVarsity knows how to throw a great party!” Heck yeah, we do.

I got to bed Friday night around 3 a.m. I was exhausted, but glad for our first clear-cut “win” of an event since mid-August. Not saying that one night will turn everything around, but it’s sure nice to have a sense of a job well done.