A serious debate has gripped a small corner of one of the region’s most selective campuses, forcing students to confront the philosophical core of a once-dormant organization now entering its renaissance.
Should non-sugary cereals be allowed?
And where, exactly, does non-dairy milk fit into the cosmology and aura of a cereal club?
The issues led some candidates for the executive board of the University of Virginia’s Cereal Club to victory last spring. Their answers now define the club’s third semester back on Grounds after a year of dormancy in which nobody, officially speaking, ate cereal together.
Its leaders and members, many of whom also belong to U-Va.’s application-heavy, interview-required, grand-problem-solving clubs, say this one asks only that its members like cereal. That simplicity lets them just be kids, relaxing with friends over a bowl.
“The overarching goal of this is that it’s deeply unserious,” club president Emmett O’Brien said. “We’re not trying to change the world. Also, everyone likes cereal.”
And they aren’t alone. Scores of college students across the country are leading and participating in clubs whose only goal is to have fun.
Some examples: A club to watch squirrels. A club to send SpongeBob memes. A club, actually inspired by the Cereal Club, to solve murder mysteries while eating various cereals.
They’re almost all on social media, documenting with puns and dry humor that the kids, at least some of the time, are alright.
“Post exam hot girl dinner, treat yourself today!” read one postfrom the squirrel watching club at the University of Maryland with a photo of a squirrel grabbing a slice of pizza.
The Cereal Club’s elections and meticulously planned events, though, are no joke. They hold meetings most months, each with a different theme, but always with cereal and milk. In 2024, the student who resurrected the club, an English major named Will Hancock, won the presidency with a haiku:
“Cereal sunlight
slips onto kitchen counter —
splash of nostalgia.”
His first task was finding other cereal aficionados to join him on the board, which included a treasurer, and vice presidents for milk and cereal.
Hancock, now a senior, drafted his three roommates for the board. Unlike the formal meetings they attended for student government and other organizations, the cereal board would meet in their living room. In their first meeting, they began listing people who they thought might like cereal until they reached 100 names, then sent an email announcing the club was back.
Its first event was a blind taste-test: store brand vs brand name cereal. They struggled to secure enough funding to buy bowls and non-dairy milk options, but said attendees could “probably get a full dinner out of it.”
The 30 who came saw wooden tables stacked with boxes of Frosted Flakes, Raisin Bran, Cheerios, Froot Loops and Special K, alongside generic versions.
Most people had no idea which was which. O’Brien, then the VP for cereal, was certain he did. He had once passionately debated the merits of Special K over a store brand colloquially known as “Red Berries.”
Each cereal was poured into two different bowls, then 2 percent milk — never the other way around. O’Brien guessed which was the brand name. The crowd gasped. He put his head in his hands. Someone snapped a picture.
“I was dead wrong,” he recalled.
The club, though, was off to the races. They celebrated National Cereal Day in March and partnered with a student poetry club for a cereal-themed open mic night. They followed bylaws ordering new officers be sworn in on a box of their favorite cereal.
The club attracted very serious students who ate cereal for breakfast and every night at midnight, who always had four open boxes of cereal at home and who knew maybe just a bit too much about obscure cereal mascots.
“It pokes fun at what really matters at U-Va.,” said Hancock. “Why is Model U.N. more important than cereal?”
Saehee Perez, a 20-year-old junior, knew she wanted to join the club because, once, during the pandemic, she finished an entire box of Froot Loops in a breakfast-lunch-dinner-breakfast-lunch bonanza.
When it came time to elect a new board in April, she briefly considered running for VP for milk. She thought it was ridiculous that the leadership were all roommates.
She found herself buying and eating cereal and thinking about the club, and what else might be fun for it to do. She couldn’t stop thinking about cereal.
But the milk vice presidency posed a problem. She’s lactose intolerant, “so I thought that wouldn’t be appropriate.”
Instead, she ran for the agenda-setting VP for cereal. She opened her campaign speech by listing as many cereals as she could in a minute. She can’t remember how many she listed. It was a lot, she said.
Her campaign managers produced a tiered ranking of her favorite cereals. “The sugaries were at the top,” she said.
A student then asked what became the defining question of her campaign.
Would she continue buying the raisin-and-flake cereal if elected?
“Raisin Bran does not spark joy,” she told the room. “Sugary cereal sparks joy.”
Perez’s opponents never showed up but 15 of her friends did. In the spirit of Virginia’s long democratic traditions, she chose unity over boasting and pledged to continue purchasing Raisin Bran when she won.
The race for VP for milk, though, was heated. A small and vocal minority of the club’s intermittently active 30 members were what sophomore Zach Geller called “dairy-opposed individuals.” Geller started his speech with a haiku, declaring that he is a “cow’s milk boy.”
Still, he campaigned on “milk-inclusivity,” promising to represent all tolerances. But he was just a freshman at the time, running against three rising seniors, including two who had temporarily shared the milk vice presidency.
He won in an upset and at 19, is a rising star in U-Va.’s cereal politics.
After a successful cereal trivia event last month, he’s wondering if the club would consider expanding into hot cereals like oatmeal — a move that would open a new frontier.
On the Friday before Thanksgiving break, club members handed out bowls as students walked to class, quoting lyrics from Rebecca Black’s song, “Friday,” which mentions cereal.
Most of the club’s leaders said they aren’t doing this for a professional boost. Almost all of them, though, have put the Cereal Club on their resume.
“It doesn’t get a full bullet point,” Perez said. Depending on the internship she’s applying for, she may take it off. But she realized in a recent consulting interview it also sets her apart, and at least makes for good conversation.
JP Hoffman, a fourth-year treasurer who has secured hundreds in grant funding for the cereal club and who has a nightly midnight bowl, said he’s tried to make sure the club stays viable after he graduates. He opened a long-term savings account for the club.
Seeking grant money can be tricky. One grant application asked what the club plans to purchase with the funds (answer: cereal and milk). Another asked what community or philanthropic goals the club has. That response was harder, Hoffman said.
“The Cereal Club is like surrealist art — a commentary on how seriously we take ourselves,” he said. “None of these clubs really matter. And yet, maybe they all do.”
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