The Cold Shoulder

It’s 37 degrees outside. Snow is expected this weekend. And freshmen Megan Harvey and Emily Winafeld are focused on only one thing: ice cream.

Harvey, a government and politics major, and Winafeld, an engineering major, said a little cold isn’t enough to keep them from their favorite dessert, which the university has been offering homemade since the 1920s.

“I’ll eat minimal dinner so I can eat ice cream,” Winafeld said. “There’s no substance like it.”
Equipped with more than 30 flavors, the university produces ice cream year-round, a process that will not slow as the winter months persist, administrative chef Jeff Russo said.

But where production perseveres, consumption might not always follow. And while the university’s signature ice cream has its die-hard fans, Dairy Supervisor Claudia Funes said she notices a distinct drop in sales during the winter.

“It’s very slow in the winter,” said Funes, who has worked at the Dairy for 16 years. She added the summer months tend to bring in different tour groups, who always make their way to the Dairy.

Sophomore mathematics major David Berlin counts ice cream as part of his personal arsenal for combating the cold.

“It lowers your blood temperature,” he said. “It makes you more impervious to the cold.”
Other students rely on ice cream to keep their spirits up during the dreary winter months.

“Whenever I’m feeling down in the dumps, I eat ice cream,” sophomore finance major Paul Rowe said. “So about two or three times a week.”

But unlike Rowe, not all students are rushing to get a cold scoop of the university’s finest.

Despite an apparent drop-off in business, Russo works in the basement of the South Campus Dining Hall between six and 10 hours a week, crafting what amounts to more than 25,000 gallons of ice cream a year.

The ice cream is packaged and dispersed to The Diner, the South Campus Dining Hall, the Dairy and at various university sporting events throughout the year.

“Any time the students are on campus, the production is pretty constant,” Russo said. “Milk shakes are huge sellers all year.”

The frozen treat has always attracted long lines at both dining halls, despite the long-standing rumor that the ice cream’s fat content is so high it exceeds Food and Drug Administration standards.

It turns out the ice cream’s legendary fat content is simply that: a legend.

Russo said the rumor has been popular among university students long before his time.  

“There’s no truth to that,” he said.

Russo said the university’s ice cream usually contains 14 percent butterfat, which gives it “a nice mouth feel.” He then compared it to Breyers ice cream, which usually weighs in at 11 or 12 percent butterfat.

Anything less than 10 percent, he said, “you would have to call an ice milk.”

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