Police lined the halls of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s Stations dining location. This has been a common occurrence throughout the last few weeks as Stations’ managers always call for back up when the soft serve ice cream machine stops working. Usually the police do not have to get involved, but that all changed Thursday night.

“The students just started rioting,” senior psychology major and student manager Katelin Finch said. “One minute they were rolling their eyes at the sign, then the next they started picking up plates and throwing them at the machine.”

Students continued to revolt by grabbing left over food and throwing it at the workers while chanting “soft serve.” Employees tried to take cover, but they failed as the students jumped over the counters and continued to whip food at them.

“The last thing I remember is someone throwing carrots at me and telling me that it was all my fault. I don’t even know how it’s my fault, I’ve never touched the ice cream machine in the two years that I have been at Platteville,” sophomore criminal justice major and Stations employee Ashley Kerstner said. Kerstner suffered severe bruising from the attacks.

Police only got involved when rioters started to tip over the soft serve machine. However, they were too late. Pools of chocolate and vanilla ice cream swarmed the floor as students ran over to it with ice cream cones in hopes that they could get some sort of dessert.

“All I wanted was a little ice cream,” Ian Glynn, junior, engineering major and riot member said. “It’s dumb that they can never fix the machine by the time I want dessert. This was just a long time coming.”

Police said that it was one of the messiest scenes that they have ever seen on campus. The events that occurred required the university to put its campus on lockdown so that they could gain control of the situation. At the time of publication, ice cream is still stained on the tile floor and employees are still being forced to clean up after the mess. Student employees who worked during the riots are required to clean the mess or else they will receive a one -point violation for insubordination.

“I have been here for over 40 hours this week just trying to fix some of this mess,” Finch said. “There’s still so much to do and not enough employees to help.”  Thursday nights are typically understaffed at Stations, so with the six employees on medical leave due to injuries that leaves more work on other people.

At this time, no arrests have been made for the soft serve massacre of 2016. However, Glynn believes that this will be something that will go down in UW-Platteville history.

“Everyone can stop talking about that tornado that happened however long ago and focus on this now. This is what people are going to remember and I can’t wait to tell my grandchildren about this one day,” Glynn said. “They’re going to ask me about the soft serve massacre, and I will tell them that I was one of the first people to throw a plate.”