The Exponent - features


04-26-2004	Previous edition: 04-23-2004

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Purdue Beat Club hosts pillow fight to help kids

By Jennifer Clark
Staff Writer

Although many students came in normal attire, one individual sported ninja garb and wielded two pillows as he displayed his pillow fighting skills and terrorized fellow classmates.

As speakers blared heart-pumping beats, several students battled with pillows of all shapes and sizes to smack fellow classmates into submission and defend their pillow-fighting honor Friday night.

"My friend got this idea to actually try to break the Guiness record for the most number of people to pillow fight continuously for 60 seconds, but it took too much work to finish the paperwork," said Rob Ribeiro, president of the Purdue Beat Society and sophomore in the School of Pharmacy. "Instead, we decided to just host a pillow fight while playing music for the fun of it."

The original record was set in June in Anderson County, Kan., with 645 people pillow fighting for 60 seconds. Oregon State University also had dreams of breaking that record in November when it held a pillow fight involving 766 students.

"I was just browsing the Internet when I came upon the Guiness Book of World Records Web site and saw the pillow-fighting record," said Marcus Daniels, junior in the School of Science. "I thought that, this being Purdue, a fairly large university, it wouldn’t be that hard to break it. It definitely takes a lot of energy though to pillow fight for 60 seconds continuously."

Although the original goal was dropped, the Purdue Beat Society along with Kappa Alpha decided to turn the pillow fight into a philanthropy event, raising money for Dreams for Kids through T-shirt sales and donations.

Approximately 30 students came to pillow fight and chill in Memorial Mall while listening to beats pumped out by several aspiring disc jockeys, all members of the Purdue Beat Society.

Dan Krueger, freshman in the School of Science and one of the DJs, said he had practiced spinning in his room before he found out that Purdue had a beat society. He said he was excited to get the chance to spin in front of the populace for the first time.

Even though the pillow fight was divided into rounds, the ninja initiated several out-of-round battles, ducking and jumping out of the way of the flying pillows of his opponents only to retaliate with pillow fighting ferocity.

"I thoroughly enjoy the smack of my pillows on unsuspecting victims," said Jasper Edwards, junior in the School of Health Sciences who dressed as a ninja. "I’m just enjoying my youth by pillow fighting and looking stupid while doing it."

Ribeiro said, "I’d love to make the Purdue Beat Society a big organization doing more of what we are doing now, setting up decks and speakers and hosting random crazy events. Hopefully, we can make this an annual event and draw more people in."

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Purdue Beat Club hosts pillow fight to help kids

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Assistant features editor: Lisa Poppe

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