Computer science students celebrate Pi Day early with a pie-your-professor fundraiser

The Department of Computer Science celebrated Pi Day, March 14, early by giving students the opportunity to throw pies at their professors.

The idea came from Alden Sharpe, the alumni relations coordinator for the department. The purpose of the event was to raise money for the 17 student clubs in the department.

“She wanted to come up with an idea to raise money for student clubs, but also to give students and faculties the chance to kind of hang out together and have fun together,” said Gina Rozier, external relations manager for the computer science department.

Rozier said 13 out of the 35 faculty members in the department said they would participate.

“The first thing I did was go to the professors and say, ‘Would you guys be willing to get pie thrown at you?’ and surprisingly more than a third of the department professors said yes,” Rozier said.

Students could pay $10 to throw a pie at any of the faculty other than department chairperson Kevin Jeffay.

If they wanted to throw a pie at Jeffay, it cost $15.

If students allowed faculty to throw a pie back at them, they would get an extra pie to throw.

“There’s a thing, like getting back at your professors ... just being like, telling them you appreciate them but also being like, ‘Hey you know that one time maybe that one grade you gave me,’ you know, just let them know about that one,” said Sarah Rust, a computer science masters student.

Rust was pied back by her professor.

Rozier said when she went to Jeffay to pitch the idea, he not only said yes. He actually volunteered.

“Oh it’s good clean fun, and the thought was that, you know, it’s the head of the department, I torture enough of the students, this way they could torture me back,” Jeffay said.

He said this is the first year the department has hosted a Pi Day.

“Pi plays a large role in computer science and in STEM disciplines generally, so celebrate pi and you celebrate pi by throwing pies at each other,” Jeffay said.

Senior computer science major Adam Aji said he participated in the event because he thought it was a cool way to raise money and have fun.

Jeffay said he wanted to pie some students. But he resisted.

“This was the time for them to throw a pie at me, not the other way around,” he said.

Rozier said after the event, the department raised $802 for the clubs. Of that, $92 was for eaten pies and $710 came from thrown pies.

She said more money is still coming in from faculty.

university@dailytarheel.com