Diners at Crossroads were met with quite the bizarre sight on Feb. 2 as a group of around 30 people flooded into the cafeteria at 5 p.m., swiping their Cougar Cards and forming a single-file line in front of the cereal dispensers. The group then retreated to the long high-top tables, determined to eat every last Lucky Charm, Cocoa Puff, and Cheerio.

The crowd was organized by senior Caleb Kreuger. In the weeks before, he had distributed flyers advertising, “eat all of the cereal in the cafeteria” with a QR code to a GroupMe for the event. Once the word had spread, Kreuger coordinated a day and time for everyone to come together to fulfill his vision. 

Krueger said that he got the idea from his older brother, who always wanted to eat all of the cereal in the cafeteria. In the market for a senior prank, Kreuger took the opportunity to live out his brother’s dream.

“Something I’ve learned in my classes is if you’re really passionate about something, that passion can sometimes rub off on other people. And when I was promoting this event, I was very excited about it,” Kreuger said. “It’s fun and it’s college lore. This is something I’ll be telling my kids.”

The students gathering in the KCC lobby prior to the event shared similar sentiments.

“It seemed like a good community event and I do like eating cereal,” senior Nathan Goman said. “So it was a good excuse to do both.”

Other students were most drawn in by the goofiness factor.

“We’re using the caf resources as we’re supposed to: by eating,” said junior Hannah Weber. “But it’s a fun way to hang out with people, and it’s very silly and goofy.” 

Ten minutes into the event, after the cereal dispensers were refilled once and quickly emptied again by the crowd, the cereal was removed from the cafeteria.

“They probably were just trying to preserve it for other people, but I don’t really think that’s a good justification because plenty of us wanted to eat it,” junior David Young said. “We weren’t being wasteful, we were enjoying the cereal and eating it.”

Frank Budig, a general manager at Sodexo, gave the order to pull the cereal after being notified of the incident.

“I explained to him [Kreuger] that I really don’t think it’s a Christian thing to do while people are starving around the world, to see how much cereal we can eat,” Budig said. Budig added that Sodexo donates around sixty meals to an Oak Park homeless shelter every week.

Though the event was shut down quickly, Budig said he would be open to working with students to coordinate a cereal-eating event with a different focus.

“I think if we got together and kind of planned it out a little bit, I think we could make it where his event could be successful,” Budig said. “I thought, ‘What if we did something where it’s how much cereal you can eat in a minute or thirty seconds?’ And then maybe somehow combine it with something so good would come out of it, so that somehow we could donate to the needy through that.”

While the cereal dispensers were pulled before all of the excess stock could be depleted, Budig said that the event did deplete the milk in the cafeteria. Budig brought more into the caf the following morning.

Though the event was over within an hour of it beginning, Krueger considered the removal of the cereal dispensers a victory, declaring the event a success amid the crowd of cereal-eaters assembled in the cafeteria.

Kreuger said, “I feel so proud of our community, because everybody showed up for a cause greater than themselves.”