Who really is the mastermind behind Wednesday’s chicken day?
Posted by The Skyliner on February 24th, 2010Christine Parks
Staff Writer
What happens once a week, represents a bird and feeds North Greenville students? Chicken day. Every Wednesday, students can have fried or baked chicken with sides of green beans, corn and mashed potatoes. Considering that NGU is in South Carolina and fried chicken is practically as necessary as water in this state, the fact that fried chicken is served every Wednesday may seem obvious.
There is, however, an origin to chicken day, and the culprit is our president, Jimmy Epting.
“As president, I have to travel a lot and have to be away from campus more than I want to be and I love fried chicken. I never could figure out when the dining hall was having fried chicken and I never could be here at the right time when they had fried chicken,” Epting said. “I started thinking and said, ‘You know, I am president, so maybe I could do one thing, first of all for all of us – especially for myself – and that’s to have a fried chicken day.’”
The origin of chicken day has been solved but a few other questions need to be answered: Why on Wednesday and why fried chicken?
Since Epting is the mastermind behind chicken day, he has all the answers.
“Wednesday at lunch is sort of the hump. At that time, you’re sort of finally over most of the week,” Epting said. “Let’s just reward ourselves with good old fried chicken. So we decided that the tradition would be said to have fried chicken every Wednesday.”
The reason why the food selection for Wednesday is fried chicken goes back to Epting’s family roots.
“Growing up, most Southerners, not all of us, but most Southerners like fried chicken. Nobody could cook fried chicken better than Grandma. Many Sundays, usually it was always on Sundays at lunch, we would have fried chicken. So I grew up loving fried chicken and I still love fried chicken,” Epting said. “I want my students, my faculty and my staff to have one lunch a week that has fried chicken in it or baked chicken.”
Epting is aware of health concerns. Smiling, he said, “I know now that we have to be more health conscious and all that, but the best thing to do is just to take the skin off the meat or get baked chicken or grilled chicken. One piece of fried chicken a week is not going to hurt you that much. Now you could eat about 10 and it might [hurt you] or something. So it is sorta like ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ So I think one piece of fried chicken a week keeps the doctor away.”
Tags: Spring 2010, Vol. 110 - Issue 5