You’ve got two days to register with me for what might be a once in a lifetime humiliating second-long spot of you throwing up a dozen doughnuts on ESPN. What more could you ask for as a pinnacle — a crowning culmination to a college career? The University traditionally lacks tradition and finally has something it can call its own that doesn’t require alcohol and seems about as bulletproof from administration cancellation as any idea in recent memory, unless they’re worried about rampant obesity stemming from doughnut consumption (at least the organizers stuck with a relatively healthy North Carolina product instead of something like the “Marlboro Light Challenge”). The Krispy Kreme Challenge started in 2004 with only a handful of students participating in the event, and it has mushroomed into a local cultural phenomenon and last year raked in $20,000 and featured over 3,000 participants. The challenge has landed NC State on ESPN for something other than the 1983 National Championship game and earned a coveted place on the “102 More Things You Gotta Do Before You Graduate” in Sports Illustrated:On Campus. Just as important as the national publicity, it’s the maturation of a tradition at NC State. Our community needs this desperately. We need an event that we can call our own so when people think of NCSU, there’s some sort of tradition or event associated with the University community. Year after year it’s almost painful to watch the ideas flounder and the formerly successful event and traditions slowly fade from the memories of each new incoming freshman class. Hillsborough Street is stagnant, student housing continues to move further and further away from campus and an increasingly apathetic mood seems to hover over the school at times when it comes to developing a sense of what “NC State” is other than an autobahn of innovation. We need traditions, and we need support from administration because our traditions define our University and drive publicity and students. We need events that bring the school together or else we risk becoming the University of Phoenix’s latest commuter university in Raleigh with no sense of camaraderie. So go run and help keep this event around – its $16.00 for a good cause and you get a dozen doughnuts and a T-Shirt. More importantly, you get to look back 20 years from now after the event has become a regular on ESPNU and tell people that you completed (or attempted to complete) the Krispy Kreme Challenge when you were an undergraduate.
Don’t let KKC pass you by
February 2, 2009