Students gorge during Eat Oakland Challenge

Chipotle, Dave and Andy’s, Taiwan Cafe, Primanti Brothers, The Original Hot Dog Shop and… Chipotle, Dave and Andy’s, Taiwan Cafe, Primanti Brothers, The Original Hot Dog Shop and LuLu’s Noodles offered free food dishes to Pitt students that ran through the streets on a quest to become the fastest eaters in Oakland.

Last night, Team Johnny Adam’s Representatives proved victorious in the Eat Oakland Challenge — consuming the six meals in less than an hour.

Eat Oakland is the first program of its kind funded by Residence Life. Challenged to eat from six different venues, students who participated in this program experienced restaurants they had never been to while having a good time eating free food.

At this event, 14 teams — all but one of which had six students — met at the William Pitt Union at 7 p.m. Thursday. Before leaving for the six restaurants, students had to match six slices of pizza to their various pizza places of origin.

Team Johnny Adam’s Representatives was the first group to return from the six restaurants on campus and eat the final challenge: a cupcake from Dozen Cupcakes.

They received a golden plunger that said “Eat Oakland Champions 2011,” a bottle of sparkling grape juice and other small prizes.

Junior Paul Reeping, a resident assistant in Tower A, acted as program coordinator for the event. He said in a text message that they wanted to use the plunger because, “It’s a play on the fact that they will probably be using the bathroom later!”

Reeping created this event to celebrate the food that Oakland offers. Last night’s Eat Oakland was the first of what Reeping hopes to be an annual Resident Life event. Many of the students who participated in this event enjoyed trying food from the various restaurants.

Lauren Miller, a sophomore and a resident assistant from Sutherland, created Team Awesome, which came in fourth place in the challenge. Miller said that she signed her team up for the event because “it sounded like a really fun thing to do.”

One sophomore participant, Stefan Brooks, who had never been to Primanti Brother’s or Taiwan Cafe, enjoyed experiencing new food.

“This was a fun, community-building event. It was good [for everyone participating] to try all the different food,” Julie Morris, a junior who volunteered at this event, said. Morris had never eaten at Papa Da Vinci’s, one of the pizza places from which organizers ordered pizza.

Reeping limited the number of restaurants students visited, in an effort to make sure that none of the participants overate. Many students felt that the amount of food was not the challenge and that getting around campus fast was the hardest part.

Tess Napierkowski, a freshman who took part in this challenge, said, “For those of us who don’t exercise, it was difficult to eat and then sprint to the next restaurant.”

One team, Super Vlad, came in last place after five of its members droped out. Brent Oliveros, the team captain, had to find replacements for his missing team members right before the event.

Oliveros pulled together with two of his friends to finish the challenge. Their goal was to finish the event before 9 p.m., when Eat Oakland finished. “In our minds, we won,” he said.

“After the burrito, it was all down hill from there,” Oliveros’ teammate Shaan Sadiq said. Sadiq, a sophomore, said he felt sick a few times throughout the event. “But it feels good to complete [it].”

Reeping said that normally after a Residence Life event, students would go out to eat to celebrate. After this event, however, the celebration had to take a different form.

“There will be no celebratory dinner,” Reeping said.