On December 9, 2009, UW-Madison was closed due to snow. The bored students of Madison decided to use the snow for a battle between the Lakeshore and the Southeast dorms.
According to the Wisconsin State Journal, Lauren Jernegan started a Facebook group for a snowball fight at Buscom Hill, which is on campus, and people kept joining until there were 6,000 people in the group. Unfortunately, that many people didn’t make it because of the freezing temperatures outside. Only 700 people fought the cold to be a part of this event.
The largest unofficial snow ball fight in history is held by Michigan Technological University in 2006 with 3,700 people involved in the snowball fight.
Some people were fortunate enough not to get hurt by the pelting of snow balls; some other people weren’t as fortunate. A couple kids left with bloody noses and some were hauled to the emergency room with eye injuries.
The last time UW-Madison closed all classes was in 1990.
According to the videos taken on December 9, 2009, there were people on two sides of the campus throwing snowballs at each other. In some YouTube videos all you can see is white snow being flung around. In others there are people frantically running around either to hide or to attack the opposing side.
People on either side ran around with giant flags to show the support of their side.