UBC snowball fights draws hundreds

For the first time in a few years, students at the University of British Columbia finally got the chance to pelt each other with snowballs again and revel in the white stuff.

Christine Chin, external relations coordinator for the student organization The Calendar, says hundreds of university students, and a few faculty, showed up to face off in the snowy battle Thursday.

Due to insufficient snow the past couple years, Chin says the student group hasn’t been able to run the event since 2019.

But around noon on Thursday, students showed up in droves at UBC’s Main Mall to make up for lost time.

“The whole concept is to get all the students to come out to across the Main Mall at UBC, the largest strip, and we get two rows… and then we create a lot of hype,” Chin said.

“There’s a big countdown and then everyone starts to chuck snow at each other.”

Chin says the fight lasted for about half an hour before petering out.

“It got really, really intense. We had a lot of people who came in snow gear, there’s someone on campus who has a Spiderman suit and he came out too,” Chin said.

This year’s crowd was slightly smaller, Chin says, due to the fact that the event was held on a day when classes were cancelled, but she says it was nice to see so many first year students come out, since many of them live on-campus.

After the event, Chin says social media posts about the snowball fight on the student group accounts have gotten the most likes they’ve ever received on any post before.

“I think it was probably the biggest highlight of 2024 so far, even though we’re only two to three weeks in,” Chin said.