On Thursday night, residents of Allison and Shepard halls pelted each other with snowballs, ice water and even empty milk jugs during the dorms’ annual snowball fight.
The 45-minute melee ended with both sides declaring victory, each dorm vowing a rematch and one student heading to the emergency room.
The casualty: Speech freshman Dan Aukes, whose cornea was scratched when an enemy snowball whopped him in the head.
“I just bent over and an ice ball came over and scraped my face and cut my eye,” said Aukes, who fought on Allison’s side. “I knew that it was all in good fun, so I’m not bitter.”
But Aukes is prepared for any future chilly fights: His parents gave him a bomber hat with goggles.
Ducking flying snowballs, Allison Hall resident Anand Mathew’s shoes fell off during a “reconnaissance mission” to reclaim two blue recycling bins from Shepard residents.
Mathew, a Weinberg freshman, was lured into the fray when he heard yelling outside his window. As he poked his head out, a well-aimed snowball hit the screen and splattered snow all over the room.
Vowing war, Mathew borrowed a friend’s too-large shoes and ran outside with no socks, scarf, hat or jacket. And then the shoes fell off while he was running.
“Of course my shoes were going to fall off – they were five sizes too big,” he said. “But everyone was all into the fight. It was a ton of fun.”
With Allison residents dumping water out of fourth-floor windows, the faux-battle turned nasty.
“It got a little violent,” said Shepard resident Kyle Moyer. “We threw powder in their face. They got mad about it. It almost reverted to melee combat a couple of times, but it never really happened.”
When Allison resident Randy Scott and his friends heard screaming outside, they grabbed a plastic purple megaphone and began yelling insults out the window.
“We just thought it was a bunch of idiots pelting snow,” said Scott, a Medill freshman. “We were just yelling, ‘Shepard sucks, Allison rules.’ We just wanted to encourage our friends.”
Shepard resident Alex Louie didn’t join the snowball fight until the final 20 minutes, but he threw his energy into the battle.
Louie’s missions were to guard Shepard’s blue recycling bins full of water for packing snow and to charge Allison lines.
“Every once in awhile they’d come by and try to take our recycling bins,” said Louie, a Weinberg freshman. “It just got crazy.”
One Shepard resident even crossed enemy lines to peg Allison’s security monitor with a snowball.
As for victory, both sides claimed they dominated.
“We just pounded them the entire time,” Shepard resident Moyer said. “If you look at hits taken, we probably took more hits, but as far as territory covered, we won.”
