In 1897, Pardee Hall was under attack by a disgruntled philosophy professor, with the building turned to ashes. On Tuesday, Pardee Hall, while not destroyed, was under attack by thousands of snowballs.
Approximately 282 students, or 10 percent of the campus population, crowded the Quad on Tuesday afternoon, participating in a school-wide snowball fight, according to organizer Remy Oktay ‘24. The skirmish was made possible by the nine inches of snow that fell going into Tuesday morning, the most snow reported on College Hill since February 2021.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I really gotta not do any work today and just have lots of fun, and make the most out of this one opportunity,'” Oktay said. “I’ve been waiting so long.”
Oktay came to this realization while grabbing breakfast at Upper Farinon Dining Hall with a friend. He created a fake snowball fight record of 141 participants to tempt students to break that record.
“I thought, what if do 141, put in the flier, and then I sat there for an hour and a half just texting it to people, calling people in various different organizations seeing if they’d be willing to put it in group chats,” Oktay said.
His efforts paid off.
A snow fort, approximately 10 feet tall, was built in the center of the Quad. Multiple students, including Michael Feldman ‘27, tried to climb it, though they were quickly pelted with snow.
“I saw one of my friends on it and he was acting like a king,” Feldman said. “We ended up kicking them off with huge snowballs and I tried to get on and I almost fell off immediately. It was really fun.”
At one point, Oktay and his friends entered Pardee Hall’s second-floor balcony. Some students then followed them.
“We went up the stairs and then into the math lab, opened up the window only to find, of course, there’s plenty of snow on it,” Oktay said of the balcony. “And then [we] just started hurling snowballs at people.”
“The rest of the people all across the Quad walked over and started lobbing snow,” Oktay continued.
The event was not without controversy, however. After many of the students left, the Office of Public Safety received a complaint from an unnamed employee about the students on the Pardee balcony.
“We spent some time cleaning up the water inside, and that’s when PSAFE came,” said Dan Throne ‘27, a student on the balcony. “They mentioned we shouldn’t have been on the balcony, we shouldn’t have gone to the window. They also thought we were hitting the PSAFE cars, which we were not.”
Seven students, including Throne, had their student IDs checked as a result.
“We didn’t think it was particularly safe to be on that second level of Pardee,” Jeff Troxell, the director of Public Safety, said.
The college’s student life division was tasked with investigating the incident. According to Throne, student life staffers will soon meet with the students.
The Student Code of Conduct, under the section “Dangerous Practices,” states that “hanging out of or climbing from on, or in windows, balconies, roofs, is prohibited.”
Regardless of the investigation’s result, Oktay hopes that Tuesday’s event serves as a reminder to always bring joy to campus.
“We have to remember to have fun every once in a while and embrace those moments,” Oktay said. “Spend time with our communities and have fun, do silly things.”
