A half-gallon of ice cream, a spoon and the chance to win cash for their philanthropy sat in front of them. Contestants had no idea they would have ice cream on their faces by the end of the night.

Members from three fraternities and three sororities battled it out at Cold Stone Creamery on The Strip in an ice cream eating contest to win money for their organizations’ philanthropies. They began eating the first half of the ice cream with a spoon, but what they didn’t know is that they couldn’t use their hands to eat the remaining half.

Lauren Van Grouw, a senior majoring in public relations and one of the members of 5 Star PR, a group that coordinated the effort with Cold Stone, said she felt the event went smoothly.

“I was very pleased with this event tonight,” she said. “Working on this actual campaign has shown me what reality is going to be like after graduation.”

From March 4 to April 1, greeks checked in every time they visited Cold Stone, and the top three sororities and top three fraternities got a chance to participate in the eating contest that concluded the “Get Chill for your Phil” event.

The participating sororities were Alpha Delta Pi, Alpha Omicron Pi and Chi Omega, and the participating fraternities were Sigma Chi, Sigma Phi Epsilon and Phi Kappa Sigma. The greeks’ philanthropies ranged from the Make-A-Wish Doundation to the Ronald McDonald House to prostate cancer research efforts.

This was the last event that the public relations team planned to coordinate with Cold Stone as a part of their senior project. In addition to “Get Chill for your Phil,” the campaign groups also hosted “Cold Stone’s Eat and Run Relay” this semester.

Glen Dodd, owner of Cold Stone, said the campaign ran very well and it was great to work with the different teams on all the events.

“Even though today we had the threat of bad weather that maybe hurt the attendance of the event tonight, I still feel everything ran smoothly and was well organized,” Dodd said.

After about two and a half minutes, Peter Huang, a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon, poured the remaining half of his ice cream in an aluminum pan to begin eating without his hands. At this point, the others were still using their spoons.

With a time of four minutes and 46 seconds, Huang finished his sweet cream ice cream and was the winning fraternity member who would go on to the trivia contest at the end to compete against the winning sorority member.

“I don’t know how I did it so fast,” he said. “I was in the zone and very focused.”

The winning sorority member was Taylor Stevens, representing Alpha Delta Pi, and she finished the last of her cake batter ice cream at 10 minutes and 35 seconds.

The deciding factor for the first- and second-place winner was a trivia contest between Stevens and Huang. The winner was whoever answered the best of five questions that were about Cold Stone, Alabama football and the Greek alphabet.

Stevens won the trivia contest as she answered “26” to a question about how many letters are in the Greek alphabet and won $200 for her philanthropy, which benefitted the Ronald McDonald House.

Alpha Delta Pi also won an additional $100 for visiting Cold Stone the most throughout the month-long event.

Huang said he was glad to win the $100 for his fraternity’s philanthropy because prostate cancer is beginning to affect more young men than people are aware.