College students in Des Moines will try to set a new Guinness World Record for the largest pie fight this weekend. The current record had 671 people plopping pastries in each others’ faces, but organizers of Drake University’s event hope to have 1,000 students take part.

Student body president-elect Greg Larson says volunteers will assemble the hundreds of pies that’ll be used as ammunition. They’ll be seven-inch diameter pies, he says, but they won’t have to be baked. He says there was lengthy debate over what type of pies would be used.

“The one that seemed the cheapest and easiest to work with is an apple filling, so we’re going to be using that and then a non-dairy whipped topping to put on top of it,” Larson says. Residents of Drake’s Crawford Hall proposed the pie fight, which beat out eight other ideas as the cornerstone of the alcohol-free Drake Dogtown After Hours event.

To qualify for the record, Larson says the fruit-pie-flinging frenzy will have to last at least 60 seconds, which shouldn’t be a problem.

“We’re going to have the pies spread out and we’ll try to corral all the students in one area,” Larson says. “The plan is, saying ‘Go!’ and then them scrambling to go get the pies and figuring out who they want to pie-in-the-face and then also, taking whatever is left on the ground, they can pick that up and keep throwing it.”

He says the Guinness Book officials have strict requirements on certain elements of the record-breaking attempt. “You would think that a pie fight would require each person to have one pie,” Larson says. “Their rules stipulate that each person has to have a minimum of two pies. The original amount that we thought, around 800 pies, we had to double and that increased our costs. We’re looking at 1,500 to 1,600 pies that we’re going to have to make.”

The event is scheduled for 1:30 A.M. Saturday in the Olmsted Center parking lot, following a night of alcohol-free fun, including a swing dancing and laser tag. There’s also a raffle with plenty of prizes to benefit “Peak 4 Poverty,” a charity with a mission to educate orphans in Tanzania.