Frozen ice with a side of hot cocoa

It is so cold out that the Student Events Team was able to host an event with an ice sculpture of Stomper Jan. 26 in the Centennial Student Union Mall. Sakatah Carvers, Signs and Creations sculpted the beloved Stomper for this event. Sakatah makes custom creations in a variety of media. 

Sakatah has been to Mankato before. In 2019, they sculpted a train ice statue for the Kiwanis Holiday Lights at Sibley Park and in 2020, they carved various sculptures in front of the Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center. 

This event has been going on for the last few years, and they change what kind of sculpture they do every other year. 

“It can either be a snow or ice sculpture. Last year was a snow sculpture, but every year is usually one or the other,” said Jaxson Karline, the organizer of this event, who is in charge of spirits and traditions for Maverick Traditions at MSU. 

The event helps to celebrate the winter. 

“Usually, when it comes to winter, it’s usually two types of people. ‘I love ‘winter,’ which is like the negative one percent and then the rest are like, ‘why do I live here?’” said Karline. “It’s like the celebration of winter and having an appreciation to like the ice because cold is cold, but you gotta recognize that there’s a beauty in it as well. Everyone kind of has their favorites, usually in like the summer, spring or fall but not really much of the winter.” 

Despite the sculpture’s alluring appeal, the statue was off limits.

“We started doing this event to try and make the ice sculpture interactive because usually when there’s an ice sculpture, it’s like you can’t really touch it,” said Karline. “So, to help with that, we had a ring toss. It was cold out, so some people didn’t want to, but we also had hot cocoa to warm people up because obviously, with the cold weather coming out, they’d want something warm to drink.” 

 Coming out of Covid, activities held by the Student Events Team have seen higher turnout rates than ever, this event included.

“With recovering from COVID and coming out of it, we are seeing an increase of people coming to the events. With every single event we had this semester, it has been an increase of people we were actually expecting,” said Karline. “One example I can think of is a galactic bingo. We literally ran out of seating. People had to sit on the floor, and we ran out of highlighters when we had three boxes full of highlighters to use.”

Header Photo: The Centennial Student Union is no stranger to a wintry Stomper sculpture. Last year the sculpture was made out of snow, rather than ice. The two mediums take turns each year. (Dylan Engel/The Reporter)

Write to Lauren Viska at lauren.viska@mnsu.edu