Members of the Texas Picklers organization camped out on Speedway — microphone and camera in hand — to ask the UT community a question very dear to the group: What do you think about pickles? 

Grace Heusinger, an English and psychology senior and ‘Party Pickle,’ or social chair, said the topic brought excited and eccentric answers out of passersby.

“Some people told really funny stories, saying, ‘I was born with a pickle in my mouth. This is what I’ve wanted to do since I was in the womb —  all I’ve ever cared about is pickles,’” Heusinger said. “It was a really fun experience because people really wanted to get involved.”

Founded by theater and dance senior Zack Martin and math senior Kamal Mamdani, the student-run group Texas Picklers connects people of all majors and backgrounds through pickle-related activities. Offering events like pickling vegetables, pickle parties, pickle potlucks and pickleball, Martin said the group aims to connect students that otherwise would probably never cross paths on campus.

The idea first came to Martin, President Pickle, and Mamdani, Partial Presidential Pickle, last winter break when a member of their fraternity sent a picture of a pickle martini, asking the group chat who would drink it. Eventually, Martin jokingly sent a message calling for a ‘motion to start a pickle club.’

“We would come up with ideas and play around with it — just having fun with it at first, not really taking it seriously,” Martin said. “The more we talked to our friends and found out how many people at UT love pickles and how many pickle-related things are out there, it snowballed into a more serious idea.”

Martin said a big goal for the club lies in creating a massively inclusive social organization on campus.

“On the surface, it’s a big pickle club, but … it’s actually fairly unique and brings in people from different sides of campus with different majors and interests that would not intersect in any other way,” Martin said. 

Nursing junior Isabelle Ranke, a social chair taking on the role of Pickle Press, said the organization helps her find connections on campus — including reconnecting her with someone from her hometown. 

“At the end of a meeting, this girl walked up to me and told me she went to my high school,” Ranke said. “I’m from a very small town, … and (there are) probably less than 20 people that go to UT from my school. I would have never (met her) and run into her if it wasn’t for the Picklers.”

So far, Martin said he connected with various pickle producers around town and received products from Bob’s Pickle Pops, a local business that pickles foods and sells them at farmers markets around Austin. 

Additionally, Martin said in the future, he envisions the Picklers attending UT events as a spirit organization. This year, a couple of members dressed up in pickle costumes at the Texas vs. Alabama football game — something Martin said the group plans to do for other sports events soon. 

“It would be a dream come true if (Picklers) became a huge spirit organization where everybody has (or wears) a pickle at the football games,” Martin said. “I mainly want it to feel like an organization for all Longhorns. If it feels like that and is integrated into campus before I graduate, that’s all I can ask for.”