#snowbrawl2013: University snowball fight gets way out of hand

There's a simple reason why most elementary schools ban snowball fights: they get out of hand.

Apparently university students are not too cool for whipping balls of snow and ice at each other, either. Nor do they know when to stop. One recent snowball fight could even lead to legal action.

On Friday morning, players on the University of Oregon football team challenged the student body to a snowball fight — dubbed #snowbrawl2013 — over Twitter.

The snowball fight started innocently enough, with students and players playfully tossing snowballs back and forth.

"Then, at 12:45, all hell broke loose," reported the Daily Emerald, describing the quickly escalating snowball fight as an attack against the outnumbered players.

The football players may have received the brunt of the snow-assault — "I got a nut shot and an eye shot," running back Byron Marshall said about an hour later, when the fight was winding down. "I'm done."

A YouTube video of a car being pummelled by snowballs and buckets of snow is what turned the out-of-hand snow fight into a viral news story.

The video shows students blocking a car, attacking it with snowballs, then dumping snow on its driver, Sherwin Simmons, a retired University of Oregon art history professor.

Simmons described the group's mob mentality as a "stupid, dangerous thing, anti-evolutionary behaviour."

Oregon offensive lineman Andre Yruretagoyena tweeted a response to the video:

"Embarrassed by the video I just watched. That’s not all of us, sending the sincerest apologies."

Wide receiver Josh Huff also tweeted that he tried to stop the attack on Simmons' car.

The school is now looking into whether legal action needs to be taken. The school's police department is currently investigating the incident.

"Consequences are clear for those whose actions reflect poorly upon the university or violate its standards for student behaviour," Paul Shang, dean of students, wrote in a statement. "However, until the facts of the snowball-throwing incident are sorted out, it would be premature to speculate about any potential outcomes in this case."

A petition has been launched with intentions of pressuring "UO to condemn and carry out deep disciplinary action against those who participated in snow-fighting frenzy."

Simmons, however, has no intentions of pressing charges.

"It was a snowball fight," Simmons told KATU's Anna Canzano. "The students shouldn't involve people who aren't part of it, but this is not high crimes, not an assault, not even a misdemeanour. No one should be charged. That would be nuts.

"It's not anything I wouldn't have done at Yale when I was a student there, only we would have thrown snowballs at each other. Not at a white haired professor like me! I am 68 years old, after all," he added.

"I have confidence that the reaction of the university given what has happened will be proportional," Simmons told the Daily Emerald. "It will consider these young people and their futures and will also, I hope, suggest to them that they need to rethink behaviour like that."