Flap Jack Frenzy—Frosh SGA Puts on Chris Cakes
Freshman SGA organized their traditional Chris Cakes pancake breakfast before finals.
December 18, 2022
Students cramming trying to remember calculus formulas or frantically memorize all the books in the New Testament. Constant admonitions to “finish strong.” An ominous cloud hovering perpetually over school. For many, those are the gloomy images that usually come to mind when one mentions what the days before finals might look like, but a word that doesn’t usually come to mind? Pancakes.
A tradition since the early 2000s, Freshman SGA annually puts on the Chris Cakes Pancake Breakfast right before finals, serving up pancakes to help students de-stress. With almost 5,000 pancakes made for around 340 hungry Hawklets, (with dozens more turned away at the doors) Freshman SGA’s first official event went off so well, it broke maximum capacity before school on December 15.
“Chris Cakes is a pancake breakfast [with]…pancakes, sausage and delicious Orange Tang.” said Ali Cooper, school counselor and freshman class moderator. “For us, it’s a good celebration of the semester and something fun to do to wrap up the semester and prepare for finals. It’s just supposed to be an easy, kind of fun event.”
Though Freshman SGA plans for and helps set up the event, they aren’t the ones actually flipping the pancakes. That job goes to Chris Cakes, a catering organization that helps schools and businesses run pancake breakfasts as fundraisers, and that even holds the Guinness World Record for most pancakes flipped in an hour (1,127).
A cook from Chris Cakes came and set up a griddle to flip the flapjacks, while members of Freshman SGA assisted by collecting money at the door, distributing sausage and Orange Tang and setting up and taking down everything from the event. Though in years past, Freshman SGA had made Chris Cakes into a fundraiser, this year, they decided to charge just enough to cover operating costs, making Chris Cakes open to all students as a fun breakfast de-stresser.
“We’ve been planning it for a couple weeks now in SGA meetings and it’s a big thing for Freshman SGA, because it’s really our first event that we have to plan.” said Riley Teeven, a freshman class representative. “So everyone takes it really seriously, [but] it’s always a fun event for everyone.”
However, as Chris Cakes marked Freshman SGA’s first-ever event, it wasn’t exactly clear beforehand how the morning would go, or what type of tone the Freshman SGA wanted to set.
Freshman class president, Henry Coppinger, expressed hope in the days before that it would be a success, though, saying, “It’s the first freshman SGA thing that we’ve done, so it’ll be interesting. I think a lot of people will come out and support us and get some pancakes.”
By all measures, Chris Cakes was a success—maybe even a little too successful. Originally, it was planned for a maximum of 375 students to sit down and eat pancakes during the event, but from 7:30 a.m when it opened, to 9 a.m. when students started class, almost 400 students showed up, packing the line near the end of the event. Only about 340 students were able to eat, however, with around 50 or so turned away.
“It went very well,” said freshman class vice-president, Joe Pitzl. “[So well] that at one point, we had to stop the line because there were so many people.”
Though on the surface, Chris Cakes might just be a pancake breakfast where one can let off steam before finals, on a deeper level, for Teeven and the other Freshman SGA members, it means so much more: it builds community.
“I love pancakes, but it’s also just fun to have everyone come in. There’s always a lot of kids, all different grades, that get to sit together and share a breakfast,” said Teeven.
After having so much success this year, Freshman SGA wants to try something never done before by a freshman class: bring in Chris Cakes for a second time, during the spring semester. This time however, they plan on making a few changes, from asking two Chris Cakes chefs to come in instead of just one, to anticipating capacity for almost 450 students over the course of a morning.
Going forward, Freshman SGA has high hopes for their next pancake breakfast, and feel confident that it’ll be another hit. As Coppinger put it, “Everybody likes pancakes, so who wouldn’t come?”
