Students compete to be head of UNC Lettuce Club

There will soon be a group for competitively minded lettuce connoisseurs — the UNC Lettuce Club.

After seeing the growing trend of college students creating lettuce clubs on campus, first-years Zeke Parsons and Aaron Friedman hatched the idea to start one at UNC.

“I saw it on Twitter, and I was like, ‘That was funny,’ and I was kind of bored, so I was like, ‘Why not do this?’” Parsons said.

Meetings will be held once a year, according to the premise of a usual lettuce club. Each member will bring a head of lettuce to the meeting location and try to eat it as quickly as possible. Whoever finishes their head first becomes the new president of the club.

Parsons said the Lettuce Club hasn’t taken off yet because of paperwork related to making it official.

“We have the sponsor form signed, but the paperwork, there’s a tons of paperwork to make a club,” he said. “There’s like an excessive amount, that’s not necessary. So, like, that is still being worked on. It’s taking a bit.”

Director of the University Band, Jeffrey Fuchs, is the adviser of the club.

“Zeke asked me if I would, and I thought it was, uh, it sounded like a fun, very unique organization and I thought it would be fun to be involved with it,” Fuchs said.

Friedman said although the club may sound ridiculous, to the founders, it is relevant to their experience at UNC.

“It was something that we both, that I think we both felt like was representative of how Carolina came to be for us, how like you ... how, if you feel passion about something, even if it’s like a big joke like eating lettuce, you can make something awesome out of it.”

Friedman said the yearly meetings will hopefully be competitive but fun.

“I think it’s gonna be, like, maybe a mildly tense environment ’cause people are competing for who can eat it the fastest, but I think it will be a fun time because it’s all about having a good time and eating lettuce,” he said.

The founders said they have put some thought into the rules of the coming competitions.

“We need to talk about if there’s a standard of how big the lettuce is, but I think there’s definitely going to be like, a standard of how big the lettuce is, and probably the variety of it. So that there’s like the consistency in the competition,” Friedman said.

He said to join the UNC Lettuce Club, all interested people have to do is come to the competition.

“So if someone wanted to join, then they would just come to our yearly meeting with a head of lettuce and then they would be in the lettuce club,” he said.

Parsons said the club’s future plan is to just keep going.

“Just don’t stop it ’cause it’s kinda ridiculous, and the whole point is to be ridiculous,” he said. “Like there’s no true meaning. There’s nothing bigger.”

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