Rather than books and computers, Karrmann Library will be filled with cakes and cookies. The university plans on participating in the largest bake sale the state of Wisconsin has ever seen in order to put a significant dent into the budget problems they have recently been facing.

Vice Chancellor for Administration Rob Cramer, said earlier in the week that if the university were able to raise $2.5 million at the bake sale, which he made clear was not out of the question, then we would look at adding programs to the curriculum rather than cutting.

“Back in the ‘80s Purdue University did something very similar and they were able to actually hire 80 more employees in times of budget crisis,” Cramer said. “I think with efforts from CPR as well as the 10 full page ads we purchased from Exponent, every student and their mother will know about this bake sale.”

The last time the University of Wisconsin-Platteville faced this significant of a budget cut, the administration simply raised tuition and let the rest sort itself out. In Scott Walker’s tuition freeze proposal released in spring 2014, he made clear that “university administrators will have to think outside the box to create additional funds, if that means throwing the world’s largest bake sale then so be it.”

Director of Campus Activities David Nevins said that with the amount of baked goods they have produced, estimated sales range in the millions of dollars.

“This is a campus activities director’s dream come true,” Nevins said. “The ability to raise this much money in a short amount of time for such a great cause is why I got into the campus activities director business and I have a great team of students who work their patooties off to save many aspects of this university.”

On Friday, CPR, along with WSUP, Exponent staff, the football, volleyball, golf, rugby and lacrosse teams, as well as the bass fishing team, Quidditch club, student senate and the LGBT club will head to the library to move all the books and computers to the basement where they will be stored until Sunday afternoon when the sale is over.

Volleyball Head Coach Deb Schulman said that in her 22 years at UW-Platteville she has never seen such a commutative effort for a single cause.

“You know many of our athletic teams may be facing the ax and what this bake sale is doing is not only raising money to save employees and organizations, but it’s bringing together the Platteville community,” Schulman said. “I’ve been around a very long time and in all my days not only have I never seen a bake sale of this magnitude, but I’ve also never seen so many people working together with such emotion for a single cause.”

CPR plans on filling the main floor of the library up with cakes. Nevins said that the cakes will draw the crowd into the door and send them searching for more. The floor below will consist of brownies, cupcakes, cookies and other small baked items. Nevins said that this floor will be the real moneymaker as they have put together over 9 tons of small baked goods. The third floor will consist of a hang out area and include beverages such as milk, coffee, orange juice and lemon-lime soda.

The event takes place on Saturday morning beginning at 5:30 a.m. and will run through midnight, making it not only the largest, but the longest bake sale in the history of the UW-System.