Dorm rivalries melted away as the men of Hillsdale made the most of the snow before spring break, competing in Thatcherball before uniting to shovel snow for sororities and building an igloo on the quad.

The adventures began with Thatcherball at 10 p.m. Friday night. 

According to senior Luke Turnbow, Thatcherball has been a tradition on campus for upwards of 40 years. 

“Margaret Thatcher knew about it when she was alive and approved,” Turnbow said.

The premise is simple. One team plays offense and one team plays defense for 10 minutes, and then they switch. The offense tries to push through the defensive line and throw or touch the ball to Margaret Thatcher’s statue. 

Each time someone successfully lands the ball on Thatcher, he earns a certain number of points for his team minus however many articles of clothing he’s wearing.

“Generally, the people who are on offense second win,” said Turnbow, who chose to referee this time around. 

Dorm rivalries have taken a backseat in the past few years of Thatcherball, Turnbow said.

“I think it’s probably one of the most unifying things that the guys dorms do on campus,” Turnbow said. “We do a draft team, so everyone splits up regardless of what dorm they’re in.” 

As Thatcherball wound down, sophomore Max Kinnney led the men of Galloway and Simpson on a mission to shovel the sidewalks of the girls’ dorms and sororities. 

“I walked some ladies home, and I walked past Kappa and they were shoveling their own sidewalks,” said Kinney. “And I was like, ‘well, that’s not really how it should be.’” 

Kinney ran back to Thatcherball as the game was finishing up and recruited a troop of Simpson and Galloway men. They grabbed shovels from the Few Good Men shed and got to work for the next hour clearing residences from Mac down to Broadlawn.

According to Kinney, the girls were grateful. Olds offered them hot chocolate, Mauk girls came out and thanked them, and one girl even offered them money.

Penny Arnn herself came out of Broadlawn to thank the boys and gave them all protein bars.

“I don’t think any of the guys really expected anything like that,” Kinney said. “We were all having fun.”

Turnbow, who joined the snow shoveling crew, hopes that this act of service will become a post-Thatcherball tradition.

“It was a spur of the moment thing,” Turnbow said. “But I think it’s something that we’re going to try to make traditional. If there’s a big snow, then it’s a Thatcherball kind of night. And if it’s a Thatcherball kind of night, then that probably means that everyone else is snowed in.”

In the same spirit of spontaneity, freshmen Christian Hinrichs and Josh Lee recruited Simpson guys to build an igloo on the quad Saturday night. 

“We had about 15 or 20 people working, everyone on different stages,” Hinrichs said. “It was really fun seeing everyone come together and have the same goal. I think it was one of the first times we’ve had a bunch of football guys from Simpson and then non-athletes from Simpson come together and do something.”

According to Hinrichs, they worked from around 6 p.m. until 2 a.m., filling bins with cubes of snow, stacking the cubes, and packing them in. 

“We really wanted to finish it because of Galloway’s igloo,” Hinrichs said. “We wanted to make it way bigger than theirs.”

Sophomore Paul Sri joined the crew around 11 p.m.

 “It kind of came out of nowhere,” Sri said. “Just a bunch of guys out on the quad late at night, blasting music, doing work with our hands and working as a team. Very welcome at the end of a long day.”

Just as they were trying to finish up, the entire roof caved in. At that point, the group decided to call it a night but not before a 2 a.m. Taco Bell trip. 

“It was definitely still a success,” Hinrichs said, “I just wish it had stayed colder longer.”