What started as one Butler student’s passion project has grown into a GroupMe chat that over 300 students belong to. The motivating factor behind this explosive launch? Ice cream, obviously.
Butler’s campus is home to over 200 clubs, covering a wide array of athletic, career and hobby-related interests and providing countless student spaces. This year, Ice Cream Club has emerged as Butler’s premier dessert-based group, providing a site for Bulldogs to enjoy sweet treats and make sweet connections. What Ice Cream Club membership looks like is relatively self-explanatory: gathering at a pre-determined spot and eating ice cream together. Behind this simple premise, however, lies a larger opportunity for social connection and escapism.
Kyle Holzman, a junior finance and marketing double major, is the founder and president of the Ice Cream Club. He was inspired to start the group by not only his love for ice cream, but also for the community he knew it could build.
“Our goal is to do four events a semester,” Holzman said. “These [would be] things like ice cream socials, having guest speakers come in [and] having factory tours. I really want this to be a community club where we all come together, eat ice cream and enjoy campus or ice cream together.”
Butler’s Ice Cream Club is not the first of its kind, but it does occupy a very small niche. Georgia Southern University is home to its own Ice Cream Club, with a similar desire for social connection. The University of Cincinnati’s Hot Chocolate Club shares the same focus, but rallies around a different sweet treat. In the sea of student organizations based around networking opportunities and resume builders, a dessert-focused group is a breath of fresh air and offers a rare escape from the responsibilities that come with being a college student.
Isabella Harmon, a sophomore psychology and Spanish double major, serves as the outreach coordinator for Ice Cream Club and builds relationships with local businesses in the hopes of partnering with them for events. For her, one of the club’s biggest draws is its ability to bring students together from all corners of campus.
“We had a lot of people express interest in the club from a variety of backgrounds,” Harmon said. “I think it’s going to be a unique place on campus for people to interact with other students that they otherwise wouldn’t really come across on campus through their own majors or student organizations.”
When students finally find their groove at Butler, it can be hard to step outside of that comfort zone and continue joining new spaces and meeting new people. Despite the refuge that complacency offers, it is important to continue trying new things because one never knows where their next life-long friend is — they might even be at Ice Cream Club.
There are plenty of things competing for a college student’s mental space. Between coursework, social events, homesickness, actual sickness, jobs and more, clubs have to fight hard to gain and retain student attention, which the Ice Cream Club has done well.
Carter Sink, a junior business technology and analytics major, is the secretary of the Ice Cream Club. Sink cited the warm welcoming that the group has received on campus as a testament of the Bulldog spirit.
“I get recognized on campus almost every day now, asking, ‘Are you the guy from Ice Cream Club?’ or ‘When’s the next event?’,” Sink said. “[The reception has] been overwhelmingly positive, and it’s a great reflection of what Butler can be and what Butler is, as a community.”
Organizing a club, especially a new one, will undoubtedly be accompanied by growing pains, which is why Holzman and his executive team ask for grace during this infancy stage. Hosting events, securing funding and recruiting community partners are just some of the learning curves that the club expects to face.
“We’re still trying to figure things out,” Holzman said. “There’s a lot of different avenues that we’re exploring right now, so I would say be patient with us a little bit. We’re still figuring out some of the kinks, but we are really, really excited for the rest of the year.”
Students interested in keeping up with Ice Cream Club can follow @icecreamclub.bu on Instagram for updates.