Oregon Snowball Fight – a Little Harmless Fun Gone Awry, But Biggest Problem Caused by Professor

by Kent Sterling

This is what college students do, and if my shoulder wasn’t fried by starting and participating in a thousand too many snowball fights, I would still be doing the same thing.  And I would have been front and center in this melee had I been in Eugene, Oregon, last Friday.

For those who haven’t heard the story or seen the video, a University of Oregon football player has been suspended in the Ducks upcoming bowl game for his role in a snowball fight that turned its attention to a professor who stopped his car, stepped from the vehicle, and was hit by dozens of snowballs as a result.

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Other students may be disciplined if they can be identified in the videos that captured the event.

In all the reports of the incident I can find, no injuries or damage to cars or property were reported.  This appears to be the latest incident of simple annoyance being converted into criminal behavior.

If the professor had any stones or understanding of student behavior, he would have picked up some snow and defended himself.

Sure, getting hit by a snowball in the face can be a little disconcerting, but it’s part of winter fun and treating the kids like criminals is an absurd overreaction by academics who feel the need to respond with punitive measures every time someone complains.

Academic administrators hate it when the phone rings, and the fact that this video has over three million views and has been elevated to an event of national importance is worth a lot of phone calls.

Of course, someone has to pay, even when nobody did anything more than hurl some crystalized water at one another, and then throw some more at a dumbass who decided to try to control campus mischief as though it was his classroom.

I’m surprised the students were as restrained as they were.  Throwing the bucket of snow on the prof as he opened his door was a little over the top – as was stepping in front of the prof’s car, but if kids are throwing snow around, don’t open your car door,

Adults have decided that anytime something mildly unpleasant happens, they have a right to legal redress.  How sad an indictment on our society that is.  Is there no American man willing to logically solve his own problem through fight or flight?

Our ‘meet, legislate, and punish’ method of handling issues with those whom we disagree is pathetic.

An Oregon student should have admonished the professor by paraphrasing the words of Colonel Nathan Jessup in the film ‘A Few Good Men’, “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who drives through the blanket of snow we are throwing, and then questions the manner in which it is used in fun. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a snowball, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what justice you think you are entitled to.”

“Animal House” was shot on the University of Oregon campus.  Not only was it a raucous college comedy, it was a how to for dealing with self-important administrative mopes with a motto of “No more fun of any kind!”  I wonder how Bluto, Otter, Boon, Hoover, Pinto, Stork, and Flounder would have responded to a Dean Wormer edict prohibiting snowball fights.

I’ll tell you this, the snowball fight would not be over.