Once a month, Ohio University junior Michelle Shively heads to the checkout at Wal-Mart with a shopping cart overflowing with breakfast food: several dozen eggs, cans of frozen orange juice, syrup, butter and the necessary materials to make a whole lot of pancakes.
People laugh at me because I buy 50 dozen eggs. There's always that one old man who asks me if I'm hungry
Shively said.
The monthly shopping excursions are actually part of Shively's responsibilities as the intern at Wesley Student Center; she organizes the group's Midnight Breakfast, which is held on the second Friday of each month.
I get to explain what Midnight Breakfast is to a lot of people at Wal-Mart Shively said. I don't know if the people I've talked to have ever come but I know I've invited a lot of people.
Midnight Breakfast, which lasts from midnight until 2 a.m., is run by members of Wesley Student Center as well as volunteers from the Christian women's service group Kappa Phi and the Christian men's fraternity Sigma Theta Epsilon, said Wesley Student Center Director Jay Hinton.
We prepare pancakes... and sausage and scrambled eggs and juice and coffee
and we just open the doors for people who are Uptown to just come and enjoy a nice breakfast and kind of get a break from whatever other activities they're into
Hinton said.
The previous director of Wesley Student Center began the Midnight Breakfast program at OU after observing a similar program at Ohio State University. It has been a staple at OU for at least five years, Hinton said.
It was just tradition. It was something that was successful
that was already happening when I came into this position. The students already knew how to run it
Hinton said. The students have ownership of it and they love doing it.
Sometimes I feel like we do it for ourselves because we have so much fun
but so many people like it
said OU junior Heather Laughlin, a member of Wesley Student Center and Kappa Phi. Usually people will make it part of their Friday night plans. We keep it going for those people that like it so much that they come every month.
Midnight Breakfast is held in the basement of the First United Methodist Church, 2 S. College St., and almost 200 students usually attend in one night, Hinton said.
The breakfast is free, but the group asks for donations, which, in the past, have benefitted Relay for Life, Good Works, Inc. and a children's home in South Carolina. Hinton said the proceeds this quarter have been put toward tsunami relief.
Funding for Midnight Breakfast comes from the Student Activities Commission, which usually pays for about half of the expenses each month, Hinton said.
People are just amazed that we're not asking for anything
that there's no catch. It's just free breakfast; you don't have to listen to us preach about anything or come to church on Sunday
Shively said.
I think because they don't push their religion
