What might have begun as an innocent prank quickly escalated last week, when University of Oregon students looking for a snowball fight began relentlessly pelting a former professor's car, even after he asked them to stop.
Students and members of the UO football team had organized a snowball fight on Friday targeting retired UO professor Sherwin Simmons. According to the UO student newspaper The Daily Emerald, the former professor was on his way to the campus art museum to donate some of his own works to the collection.
A video of the incident shows students surrounding Simmons's car and throwing snowballs and buckets of snow on his windshield. When he tries to step out of the car, he's hit with another bucket of snow.
The footage went viral over the weekend, attracting media attention and drawing a response from the school's administration.
On Monday, UO President Michael Gottfredson released a statement saying some of the students involved had been identified and that the university was "determining appropriate disciplinary actions to be taken in accordance with the university’s established policies and protocols."
"In cases where those involved are student-athletes, additional disciplinary action is being carried out by the Athletics Department," he said.
Although the students face action from the school, Simmons says he will not press charges. He told The Daily Emerald: “I have confidence that the reaction of the university, given what has happened, will be proportional. It will consider these young people and their futures and will also, I hope, suggest to them that they need to rethink behavior like that.”
UPDATE: An Indiegogo account has been created for the professor. The page is meant to raise funds to send him on a vacation - hopefully somewhere warm.