On Sunday Jan. 16, a week into the spring semester, in the middle of a blizzard that covered Cleveland in over a foot of snow, Northside buzzed with activity. In numbers that hadn’t been seen since Discover Week, students were out and about. Walking around in groups, talking and laughing, many students were amazed, having never seen so much snow before.

Additionally, some students got creative with their fun. A group outside Cutter House threw snowballs into an open window on the first floor; another wrestled each other in a ring they drew outside Wade Commons. A post from that night on the CWRU Missed Connections Instagram page read, “To everyone who was having a snowball fight right outside clarke tower the night it first snowed, you all looked so happy and it made me happy.” One student built a group of snow ducks, perched on the low wall outside the Ford & Juniper bus stop. It seemed like everyone on campus, in the midst of academic stress and COVID-19 scares, had let loose and rediscovered their inner child, even if only for the night.

However, it didn’t last just one night. There was another snowball fight at DiSanto Field the next day, and snowmen of all shapes and sizes sprouted up in areas around campus (unfortunately no more snow ducks were observed). The excitement around the snow clearly wasn’t just for freshmen. Social media, too, filled up with Snapchat stories and Instagram posts highlighting student experiences from the past couple of days. Groups went ice-skating, drank hot chocolate and were just generally out and about at a time when no other adults dared to.

Though the snowstorm might have ruined roads and stopped cars, it provided a much-needed outlet for everyone at Case Western Reserve University—a chance for people to act stupid and childish and to mess around with friends. At a school with a reputation for sacrificing fun for work, that’s probably exactly what we needed to get us through the upcoming semester.