In the polling booth, votes are confidential. At WUSTL, votes are as plain as the icing on customers’ faces.
In a lighthearted experiment to see if cookie sales can predict the winner of the upcoming presidential election, WUSTL Dining Services is again selling donkey- and elephant-shaped sugar cookies for $1.25 each.
The cookies — with elephants covered by red icing, and donkeys garbed in blue — began being sold Sept. 22 and are available through Nov. 3, the day before the presidential election Nov. 4.
Each donkey or elephant cookie sold will be counted, and a tally will be posted at the end of each day on a sign in the Commons in the Danforth University Center. The winner will be announced the evening of Nov. 3.
For those wanting to make their vote count — or satisfy a sugar craving — cookies can be purchased at the Cafe in the Danforth University Center, Whispers in Olin Library, the Bear’s Den in the South 40, the Village Cafe and the Hilltop Bakery in Mallinckrodt Student Center.
The contest has become a debate tradition at WUSTL; the molds used to make the cookies are the same molds used four years ago when cookies were sold at the Hilltop Bakery.
And for the record, the elephant won in 2004, successfully predicting the election of President George W. Bush. The cookie contest might not be the most scientific way to predict an election winner, but it might be the tastiest.