A video submitted by Tommy Pittenger, a multimedia producer for the Emerald’s Venture Department, shows University of Oregon students pelting cars with snowballs and dumping a bucket of snow on Sherwin Simmons, a retired UO professor, in front of the Erb Memorial Union, after Friday’s snowball fight was released yesterday. Since then it has gained more than 1,930,000 views on YouTube and over 8,700 comments on Reddit, as of Sunday afternoon. The video reached the front page of Reddit and was the #2 spot.

What started as a friendly snowball fight organized by the UO football team at 12:40 p.m. on Friday Dec. 6 escalated hours later.

A statement fromPaul Shang, the UO dean of students, has been released in regards to the snowball incident stating that the University of Oregon’s Police Department is currently investigating the incident and will determine whether or not the actions of the students involved constitute a criminal act.

“Consequences are clear for those whose actions reflect poorly upon the university or violate its standards for student behavior,” Shang wrote in the release. “However, until the facts of the snowball-throwing incident are sorted out, it would be premature to speculate about any potential outcomes in this case.”

Oregon offensive lineman Andre Yruretagoyena tweeted: “Embarrassed by the video I just watched. That’s not all of us, sending the sincerest apologies.”

A photo posted by Register-Guard photographer Chris Pietsch shows UO tight end Pharaoh Brown dumping a bucket of snow on another student. The viral video shows someone wearing the same outfit using a similar looking bucket to dump snow on the driver of the car.

The snowball fight turned rowdy by 3 p.m., according to UO student Liana Lis.

“At the time I had been in the snowball fight it was totally fun and it was cool because the people were there who wanted to participate,” Lis said. “But then they started throwing it at cars and I had the gut instinct that it was just wrong and it got uncomfortable.”

A petition has been created by a non-UO student to “pressure UO to condemn and carry out deep disciplinary action against all those who participated in snow-fighting frenzy.”

Reddit users are accusing what they believe to be the UO football players of “committing assault/battery, and vandalism.”

Some have stated that they are sending emails to the university’s administration as well as the UO head football coach to ask for disciplinary action for the students involved.

The comment war on YouTube quickly turned racial, so Emerald editors disabled the comment function.

Some Reddit comments include:

“I really hope something gets done about this, and it’s sad that in today’s society it takes as much visibility as reddit offers to actually make authority do something about situations like this.”

“As a graduate of the University of Oregon. I would like to apologize on behalf of these idiots. I hope some one in the administration sees this and they have their athletic scholarships revoked.”

“The athletic department itself would probably want to do nothing due to the fact that they don’t want their meal ticket (good athletes) taken away. Due to probable backlash, however, they might give them a slap on the wrist and they might have to run after practice for embarrassing and possibly hurting the program. Anything more severe than that would honestly surprise me.”

Follow Julianne Parker on Twitter @julianneparker

**Editor’s note: Inappropriate, racist or libelous comments will be deleted** 

As hundreds of students gathered at the Rec fields and in front of the EMU for massive snowball fights, one student participated in today’s snow day in a much less … conventional … way.

Wyatt Waterbury, a freshman mathematics major at the UO, was stationed in the EMU amphitheater in shoes, socks, a colorful thong and his … ironing board. 

Waterbury took up Extreme Ironing about a month ago, and if the name needs more explanation, it requires “you to do extreme things while you iron.”

So instead of joining the other students in the snowball fights, he drew his own crowd to the amphitheater to watch him iron out a pair of trousers.

“I thought, why not just bring a little holiday cheer to the EMU in my man thong?” Waterbury said as he dodged a snowball an audience member threw his way.

What’s next for Waterbury? Extreme ironing as the ball drops in Times Square.

And yes, it’s a real sport.

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is in the process of planning and evaluating the construction of a high-speed railway from the Eugene-Springfield area to Portland.

Last night, ODOT held an open house at the Eugene Public Library. Members of the public attended to gain more knowledge and state their input on the project.

According to ODOT’s website, within the next 25 years, the population of the Willamette Valley is estimated to grow by 35 percent, reaching approximately 3.6 million people by 2035.

With this population increase, travel demand will surpass the available passenger rail capacity that is readily available.

The passenger railway would not only encourage more Oregonians to use public transportation, but it would help eliminate traffic and congestion on the freeway, said Kitty Piercy, co-chair of the Passenger Rail Leadership Council.

Currently, the project is in the evaluation phase, which means they are speaking with the public and deciding on preliminary alternatives, or the best potential rail routes between Eugene-Springfield and Portland.

“We’re trying to figure out a general passenger rail route that would work for most people and we are weighing options for train frequency, trip time and improving on-time performance,” said Jill Pearson, ODOT Stakeholder Engagement Strategist.

The Oregon Passenger Rail Leadership Council complies the comments the public fills out and reviews them to see if their suggestions would be viable options for the project, said Jim Cox, Project Manager for the Passenger Rail.

The council meets on Dec. 17 to decide on a final plan for the project. The Federal Rail Administration (FRA) will then evaluate the council’s recommendations and will make the ultimate decision of constructing the 125-mile railway segment.

“We’ll see what happens,” Pearson said. “The other option too is that there is a no build. That we aren’t ready for (the Passenger Railway) yet.”

ODOT and the FRA are now working on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that requires analysis and reporting of the environmental impacts the railway may potentially have.

A $4.2 million federal grant was issued to ODOT for the project. A total of 42 percent of the project is federal funded, while the rest is state funded.

University of Oregon student Paul Belton jaunts up to the Rose City once a month in his car to visit friends.

He said that if a one-way ticket on the passenger railway were half the cost a tank of gas, then he would definitely use the public transportation system.

“My biggest concern is the cost of tickets and making it a competitive option,” Belton said. “I know people have the cost as their biggest deciding factor.”

As of now, ODOT cannot estimate the price of a ticket because the project is still in its early stages. Cox said that it all depends on the operation cost and the amount of people who will use the public transportation system.

In December of 2014, ODOT plans to have a completed draft of the NEPA that will provide more information regarding the railway’s benefits, impacts, ridership and cost of a ticket.

According to Cox, ODOT is aiming to have the passenger railway save riders approximately 30 minutes of travel time.

This past weekend, the University of Oregon welcomed back alumni from the class of 1963 who traveled from all across the globe to attend the annual 99th homecoming. A former navy officer, Portland Rose Festival queen and the founder of Willamette Week were among numerous alumni who gathered for their 50th reunion banquet dinner.

1963 was a monumental year. It was back when the Civil Rights Movement was just gaining momentum. It was the year of the March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his legendary “I Have a Dream” speech. It was the year President John F. Kennedy was shot. It was a time when the UO was rich with tradition and activism.

Standing in the dimly-lit Gerlinger Alumni Lounge last Friday night is former editor-in-chief of the Emerald, Ronald Buel. Originally from Tillamook, Ore., he went on to work at the Wall Street Journal and eventually founded Willamette Week in 1974 after graduating from the UO.

A lively and spry man for his age, he sports a bright green and yellow-striped tie and talks about the cultural changes he saw here at UO this past homecoming weekend.

“(Back in the ’60s), Oregon was much more homogenous and very much conformist.”

He stands up and walks over to the posters set up along the fireplace with old pasted photos of UO’s student organizations and athletic teams from his college years.

“Look here.” He points at the photo of the 1963 football team. Only three of the players in the photo are African American. “Now it’s about 50 percent.”

Buel is amazed by the increase in diversity on campus compared to when he was at the university in the ’60s.

“The UO was very white-bread place. There wasn’t diversity. Women were not on the same level as men.”

Buel explained that UO once had a policy called “in loco parentis,” which is Latin for “in place of the parents.” It gave the university a responsibility to stand in and act as parents for the students. Women had to abide by “closing hours” and could only sit on boy’s laps if there was a pillow separating them.

There was also a strict, no beer in the dorms policy. Buel said that a few people from his floor got expelled from the university for alcohol possession.

“The rules were ridiculous,” Buel said. “In a society that was changing we didn’t need to have ‘in loco parentis.’ We needed to have Equal Pay for Equal Work and the Civil Rights Movement.”

Buel stresses that it was not in fact the Baby Boomer generation that paved the way for the new and developing roles of women and minorities in society, which took place in the ‘70s, but was in fact Buel’s generation. The Silent Generation.

“Our generation broke through the glass ceiling.”

U.S.  Representative Peter DeFazio (D. Ore.) held a town hall meeting in Eugene Friday to address the government shutdown. President Obama and Congress finally came to an agreement on Wednesday night and signed a bill that brought the United States government back to life and ended a 16-day shutdown.

The bill temporarily restores budget authority at current spending levels until Jan. 15, and lifts the debt ceiling until Feb. 7, which could result in another government shutdown if Congress is unable to resolve the current spending and deficit issues.

Economists at Standard & Poor’s estimated roughly $24 billion in economic loss as a direct result of the government shutdown, but the total impact is still unknown.

Peter DeFazio, a U.S. representative for Oregon’s 4th congressional district, which includes Eugene,  recently returned to Oregon after spending time in Washington to work on the bill that eventually reopened the government.

“This shutdown of the government was irresponsible, disruptive, unnecessary and expensive,” DeFazio said. “The Tea Party faction of the Republican Party shut down the government in a vain attempt to either repeal or delay the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.”

The Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in March 2010, aims to reform the health care industry by giving more Americans access to affordable and quality health insurance, and to reduce the growth in health care spending in the U.S., according to white house officials.

The shutdown, which furloughed roughly 800,000 federal workers and halted many government services, began on Oct. 1 after House republicans rejected a temporary funding measure until President Obama defunded or delayed his healthcare act. When a compromise could not be reached on Sept. 30, the government was shut down.

DeFazio, a member of the Democratic Party, expressed his disapproval of the shutdown and pointed out that the minority ultra-right-winged Tea Party frightened the majority Republican Party into supporting the government shutdown.

“When people are so irresponsible as to shut down the government of the United States, costing billions of dollars to taxpayers, suspending vital services and then threatening the full faith and credit of the U.S., I think they deserve a little criticism,” he said.

DeFazio said that due to the failure of the Republican Party, the Department of Defense estimated a $2 billion loss in productivity, among other huge economic losses.

“We have a $600 billion deficit,” DeFazio said. “If we eliminate that $600 billion from the government this year, that’s everything the government does domestically. We can’t pretend we can get there just by making cuts. It has to be a balanced approach.”

DeFazio explained that even if the government were to eliminate two-thirds of government functions and employees, including those of the Pentagon, the budget would still barely balance.

Now, after five months of delay, the Republican Party is finally agreeing to meet with the Democratic Party to discuss the budget.

“(The Republican Party) is now going to conference as they should have done months ago,” he said. “Hopefully these differences will be worked out before December 13th.”

If the government is unable to reach a bipartisan decision by Jan. 15, temporary funding for the government will yet again run out and a new round of sequestered cuts will kick in. But if by Feb. 7 the government has still not made a decision, it will also be in jeopardy of defaulting on the U.S. debt, a circumstance the congressman hopes will not happen.

Time has run out. Since Congress was unable to agree on a bill to fund the government or President Obama’s largely disputed health-care initiative, the government has shut down.

For the University of Oregon and other public universities, if the government shutdown lasts less than a week, the effects will be minimal.

“From a student aid perspective, we don’t expect any impact at all,” said Jim Brooks, director of financial aid and scholarship at the UO. “The federal aid programs are forward funding, so although the federal offices may be closed, students won’t feel the impact.”

According to the education department, the annual allocations for the school year have already been allocated and do not require further congressional authorization. The office of financial aid at the UO stated that the education department will continue to award students aid and service student loans.

The office for research, innovation and graduate education at the UO has been monitoring the federal budget discussions to prepare for the challenges that the shutdown will create.

“A short-term shutdown may impact only a relatively small number of our sponsored activities; a longer closure could put significant pressure on campus financial and personnel administration supported by federal awards,” read a message sent out from the vice president for research and graduate studies at the UO.

According to USA Today College, the full impact of the shutdown on public education is unknown, “though it would certainly severely curtain the cash flow to school districts, colleges and universities.”  More than 90 percent of The U.S. Education Department’s 4,225 employees are furloughed during the shutdown.

Roughly 20 percent of school district funding comes from the education department’s funds and over 14 million students receive student aid in the forms of grants and loans at over 6,600 schools through both Pell Grants and Direct Student Loans. If the shutdown is prolonged, these payments could be delayed due to a lack of employees to process the payments.

The highly anticipated government shutdown went into effect on Tuesday, October 1, 2013. The Democratic-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House were unable to agree on the twelve yearly appropriation bills to fund the federal agencies and set spending priorities. The House recently passed a funding bill that delayed the Affordable Care Act for one year, as well as repealed a tax on medical devices. The Senate rejected the measure and after voting several more times, Congress was unable to come to an agreement, thus beginning the first government shutdown in 17 years.

In years of similar dispute, Congress resorted to stopgap budgets to keep the government funded, but Congress was unable to agree on how to execute the new stopgap. The last stopgap passed on March 28 and ended on September 30.

A government shutdown does not mean all government functions will evaporate. Functions related to national security, public safety or programs written into permanent laws, such as Social Security, will still continue to be carried out.

The office of management and budget recently ordered federal agencies to evaluate and separate employees into “essential” and “non-essential” workers to prepare for the anticipated shutdown. Roughly 1.3 million essential employees will continue working, albeit without immediate pay. An estimated 800,000 non-essential federal workers will be sent home during the shutdown.

There is no estimate on how long the government shutdown will last.

Every year the Office of Enrollment says the same thing. The incoming freshmen class is the biggest, most academically prepared and diverse in University of Oregon history. But every year it’s true. 

This year’s freshmen class is bringing roughly 3,880 students, with an average GPA of a 3.6, up from last year’s 3.57, as well as a 26 percent representation of minority students.

At the top of the class is Candace Joyner. With a 4.19 high school GPA and countless leadership positions including Student Body President and Social Justice Club President, Joyner is an exemplary student and community member.

She was recognized as such by the Stamps Family Charitable Foundation as one of five recipients of a four-year scholarship that provides tuition, room and board and an enrichment fund to study abroad. It is due to this scholarship that Joyner decided to join the UO student body.

“In high school I was definitely an overachiever,” Joyner said. “I think being such an academically rigorous student has allowed me to prepare myself for the course work at the UO. It’s taught me the importance of balance – socially, academically and in terms of maintaining my health.”

Her academic and community involvement achievements are testament to hard work and a dedication to her personal success, but they did not come without sacrifice. Amidst her many pursuits, Joyner’s mental health began to deteriorate as she developed an eating disorder, depression and anxiety.

“The perfectionistic side of me and always wanting to be selfless essentially ended up causing me to lose myself and not take care of myself,” Joyner said. “Now I know that you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself before others.”

While her past experiences with her mental health disorder were challenging to overcome, they have also helped her set aim for her future goals.

“It’s had a huge influence on my professional goals because now I’ve seen and felt what pain can feel like when you have self doubt and when you aren’t mentally healthy,” Joyner explained. “I don’t want to see anyone else go through that pain even though I know you can learn a lot from it. My experiences with my mental illnesses showed me an avenue in which I can help people.”

As a general science major, Joyner wants to become a community physiologist in the hopes of improving the mental health of our global community. But before she tackles global health, she wants to take on the Eugene community.

While her plans are still in the developmental stages, Joyner plans on creating an organization or campaign that will address mental health issues in Eugene. With her experience orchestrating Operation IMPACT, an organization that tackled rural poverty by curating and making local resources more accessible for Oregonians inflicted by generational poverty, Joyner knows how to organize community driven outreach projects. Her first steps will be getting a team of like-minded students and professionals to team with her.

“I’m reaching out to different experts in the field so I can create the dream team,” Joyner said. “I don’t have a medical degree, I just have a passion.”

Bags filled with University of Oregon spirit gear, school supplies and books were carried out by first-year students and parents as they exited the Duck Store. Move-in day came with a lot of excitement, but the financial burden of books and school supplies could be heavily felt by many of the new students and their parents. Most students estimated spending between $200-400 on their books for fall term alone — a cost that for many is a weighty addition to the cost of tuition.

“People just don’t want to buy textbooks,” said Bruce Lundy, Book Division team leader at the Duck Store. Lundy explained the efforts the bookstore is taking to keep the cost of books down for students through price comparisons, used and rental options and ebooks, but it’s still a challenge for the bookstore to accommodate for the lower prices students want.

Take a typical freshman class schedule such as Math 111, Writing 121, Business 101 and Anthropology 150 for an example. This 16-credit course load will average around $313 in book fees. Combine that with the added expense of a laptop and school supplies, and the money quickly adds up.

Although the UO financial aid website averages around $2,430 for personal expenses and $1,050 for books and supplies, many parents were shocked by the cost of the school supplies.

“It’s been a long time since I was in college, but I was surprised by the cost of her books,” said Doug Wolfe, father of freshman Natalie Wolfe.

For many students, the costs of both school materials and items for the residence halls are a burden that require varying levels of sacrifice in order to make the necessary purchases. Some students plan on getting jobs while attending school, while others from out of state are unable to go home for Thanksgiving because the cost is too expensive.

Amy Ploegman, an undeclared freshman, is paying for school on her own and has already spent $1,500 for her move into the residence halls. This cost includes a laptop, books and dorm room accessories. While the financial shadow has added stress to her college experience so far, she said it will be worth it.

Many students explained their methods of paying for school, which included grants, scholarships and loans and how the additional stress of the financial burdens will affect their university experience.

“It feels like you don’t really have a choice,” freshman Matt Wiesner said.