During his two terms as President Barack Obama’s right-hand man, Joe Biden redefined the role of the vice president as someone who is completely adorable.
(Although no statistics on this are available, consider that no other vice president has earned the affectionate sobriquet “Uncle” or had his everyday actions so celebrated as cute in memes or met golden retrievers named after him.)
Much of this is due to Biden’s compassionate work on causes ranging from domestic violence to cancer, his resoluteness in the face of personal tragedy and his open emotional vulnerability. Most of it is due to things like his professing a love for ice cream and inspiring online photo galleries of him double-fisting huge cones in public.
“My name is Joe Biden, and I love ice cream,” Biden said on a 2016 visit to Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream in Columbus, Ohio. “You all think I’m kidding — I’m not. I eat more ice cream than three other people you’d like to be with, all at once.”
So in what seems like a case of cosmic justice, Cornell University announced Tuesday that it was creating an ice cream named for the former vice president. It will be presented to Biden when he serves as the school’s convocation speaker on May 24.
The flavor, Old Fashioned Chocolate Chip, is reputedly Biden’s favorite flavor. It is a collaboration between the university’s convocation committee and Cornell’s dairy processing plant.
Confirming that this story will be supercute from start to finish, the university is having a naming contest. The final five options, chosen from more than 150 submissions: Biden’s Chocolate Bites; Bits n’ Biden; Big Red, White & Biden; Not Your Average Joe’s Chocolate Chip; and Uncle Joe’s Chocolate Chip.
Voting ends Monday night at 11:59 p.m.
