Dean Robertson (top) and Jacob Bickett (bottom) after getting pie’d.
Credit: Farah Bassyouni (top), Kevin Pankam (bottom)
On Friday, April 7, 2023 Tauk Kappa Epsilon (TKE) held a philanthropy event to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. They raised almost $300 in one hour, not through selling cupcakes or washing cars, but by letting the eager students of IWU ‘Pie a TKE’.
TKE set up their pies and their willing participants on the IWU quad during lunch hour, and students could pay $3 for one pie, or get the best of the deal with 2 pies for $5.
“The turnout actually surprised me,” TKE Philanthropy Chair Kevin Pankam said. “It was such a nice day with music on the quad and a bunch of the guys all out there being together having fun.”
Pankam admitted the idea had been done before, by other fraternities in the fall semester. But with students spending more time on the quad now that it’s spring, the good weather was on TKE’s side and everyone wanted to participate.
“The most fun part about participating in the event was student interaction,” Dean Prince Robertson said. Robertson joined the fraternity brothers and became a willing participant to let students pie him as well.
“Who doesn’t want to pie a Dean?” Robertson said. “I decided to take one for the team. It was fun, I’d do it again.”
Robertson said that oftentimes his introduction to students isn’t in the best of circumstances, and so he was glad to engage outside the office and show a different side of himself.
Plus, “The goal was to provide to St. Jude’s, but it also provided a sense of nostalgia from when my collegiate fraternity participated in a similar event during my undergraduate years,” Robertson said.
Sophomores Asia Rogers and Juanise Foster both got to pie Dean Prince, but not before he made sure someone was videotaping and taking lots of pictures.
TKE is one of the largest fraternities on campus, and many friends of the brothers took pleasure in being able to both donate to a good cause, and have fun doing it. According to Pankam, if that meant pie-ing someone in the face, then that’s what they’d do.
“My favorite part about these fundraisers is honestly doing it for the kids of St. Jude, and working with the guys in TKE too,” Pankam said. “Everyone on campus is involved for a good cause and these events are fun because we’re making sure to have fun with it.”