Readers’ pick: Straight from the dryer
George Glass proved eating socks is a lucrative business.
The senior raised $2,300 while attempting to eat a sock in a taco, his third and most impressive sock-infused dish he’s eaten during the pandemic in partnership with GW Mutual Aid. To assemble the meal, Glass diced his sock into eight pieces and cooked the bits over a skillet before constructing his taco with a fusion of chicken, mushrooms, peppers, sour cream, lettuce and a mix of seasoning like adobo and oregano.
The sock-eating event was a feat of human digestion, but more importantly, it served as a testament to how students have banded together during the COVID-19 pandemic when the University’s sense of community has seemed to dwindle.
Glass surpassed his $2,000 fundraising goal for donations to the GW Mutual Aid Network, which offers students financial support during the pandemic, and he consumed the sock during an Instagram livestream last month, racking up nearly 2,000 views.
Glass encouraged his 2,000 viewers to donate to GW Mutual Aid throughout the livestream while funds steadily grew. By the time he sat down to dig into the taco, he’d already helped raise about $500. Glass managed to finish off the entire sock with some help from his cameraman who tried one bite of the course while exceeding his fundraising goal by about $300.
During his first attempt to eat a sock last year, Glass tried ingesting his sock without any edible ingredients and struggled to down it during a livestream in July. Glass pledged to eat a sock earlier that month if the University lowered tuition for students during the fall semester.
Administrators cut tuition by 10 percent in July after announcing the fall semester would be held online because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Glass launched his second sock-eating attempt in October as part of another fundraising initiative for GW Mutual Aid, where he cooked and diced a sock before mixing it in a vegetable plate in similar fashion to his more recent taco meal. He raised more than $1,200 in the process.
Glass couldn’t stomach the entire sock the second time around, but in doing so, he left room for what became the ultimate fundraising, crowd-pleasing and community building taco mukbang of the pandemic. He cemented the taco as the best method to eat a sock, and the act represented an even greater showing of student community powering through the pandemic.
