Pillow fighting is traditionally reserved for slumber parties, where masses of young girls or boys gather to partake in what has been depicted as typical sleepover behavior. The U of I Pillowfighting Club wants to take the slumber party out of pillow fights and bring the fights outdoors while simultaneously attempting to break a world record.

The soccer field on the corner of Florida and Lincoln avenues in Urbana will play host to the Pillowfighting Club’s attempt to be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world’s largest pillow fight.

“In an ideal situation, we would want over 3,000 people to show up,” said Emma O’Brien, junior in communications. “There are other colleges that are competing, like the University of Albany. Ideally we would want as many people to show up as possible.”

According to the Guinness Web site, the current world record for the largest pillow fight is 2,773 people. It was set on Sept. 8, 2004 by the employees of a Land’s End factory in Dodgeville, Wis.

“I think that people will want to come because it’ll be fun and they’ll be a part of history, for a little while anyway,” said Jerrod Marten, a sophomore in LAS who is one of the founding members of the Pillowfighting Club. “It’ll be a story to tell your friends and maybe, one day, your kids about.”

The idea to try and break the world’s record for largest pillow fight was Marten’s.

“At the time the (pillow-fighting) record was rather small,” said Marten. “We thought that it sounded like a fun record to try and break; we thought that it would be something that people would rally behind and come and participate in. It wouldn’t cost much for people to come and fight.”

According to Marten, the guidelines for getting into the record book include exceeding the number of pillow fighters that participated in the previous record fight, they must bring their own pillows, and be within a clearly designated area.

Marten added that a minimum of two notable people from the community need to be present, and that still photos and video from the event have to be taken as well.

“I think that it’s a cool idea,” said Andi Lusha, sophomore in aviation. “It’s something that you don’t hear about very often, a pillow fight on campus. Let’s just hope that the weather holds up.”

“We’ve tried to recruit as many people as possible to show. I’m excited about it and I definitely think that it’s possible, for sure, especially if as many people as we’ve told show up,” said O’Brien.

Marten said that the Pillowfighting Club’s recruitment has mostly been kept to a minimum until the week prior to spring break. “It’s mostly been word of mouth until before break,” he said. “We’ve been handing out and putting up fliers for it, and there were people on the Quad advertising it.”

The club has talked to other people in the community in order to get them to show up as well, said O’Brien, who is in charge of advertising for the event.

“We’ve talked to local high schools. We have a story running in the Central High School paper; we’ve put announcements in the daily announcements; we’ve talked to classes, put up fliers in public places,” said O’Brien. “Basically anything we can do to publicize the event, we’ve done.”

O’Brien added that they have been running advertisements on channel two in the dorms, that the fight has been advertised on the WPGU radio station and announced to classrooms, and mock pillow fights have taken place on the quad.

“Word of mouth I think is a huge factor, though,” said O’Brien. “Other people can get their friends a lot more excited about this than we can.”

O’Brien said she is pretty optimistic about the number of people who will attend the event.

Whether the club breaks the record or not, the members of the Pillowfighting Club will be collecting donations during the actual fight in order to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“We talked about different charities and decided that St. Jude’s would be a good one to donate to,” O’Brien said. “I also think that it would help with the event; instead of it being just a random goofy thing, it’ll be for charity.”

Even if we don’t break the record, raising a couple of hundred dollars for St. Jude’s will be worthwhile, O’Brien added.