If you ask me, snow is only fun for the first two days, especially in New York City. But the one thing I can appreciate about snow is that it brings all of us together. I love seeing the snow fall and thinking about how Rose Hill is enjoying their snow day. Every time it snows, Rose Hill never misses a snowball fight on Eddies; it’s become tradition. That same tradition is known to all New Yorkers, with snowball fights breaking out in Central Park, Washington Square Park, Union Square and every other open space across the city. If you ask me, it’s light-hearted fun. Well, not to the NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
On Feb. 26, New Yorkers arrived at Washington Square Park to have a community snowball fight. The event was organized by the Instagram account SideTalk. They have created multiple viral videos the past couple of years, some of which featured former Mayor Eric Adams and current Mayor Mamdani. SideTalk is known to create large-scale events for entertainment of both viewers at home and people present at the event. This snowball fight was nothing different.
The event escalated when the NYPD arrived on the scene trying to break up the fight. It’s ludicrous to think that someone called the police on a snowball fight, but I guess not everyone has that New York winter whimsy in them. When the NYPD arrived, some officers got injured from snowballs (which sounds even crazier) and that very day social media influencer Gusmane Coulibaly was charged with a misdemeanor because he was caught on video throwing a snowball at a police officer.
When Mamdani was asked on social media about his position on all of this, he tweeted, “From the videos I’ve seen, it looks like a snowball fight.” Tisch, to no one’s surprise, said this was “disgraceful” and “criminal.”
When we look at what actually happened, it was a routine snowball fight between New Yorkers. In this case, it was organized by a massive social media page, which, if you’ve seen their videos, there’s a good chance you’d want to be in one. Their videos are electric and the people shown in them are what I would call true New Yorkers — people who have hustle, but also know how to have fun.
Tisch and Mamdani have a fragile relationship because they represent different stances: Mamdani holds anti-establishment beliefs, while Tisch supports proactive policing. Mamdani once held the stance “defund the police,” which goes against Tisch’s NYPD actions. This snowball fight is a small representation of what could be the relationship between the mayor and the commissioner. If the two can’t play nice, this will make handling crime in NYC much harder, even though it’s on the decline right now.
The situation was blown out of proportion by both sides. I believe that the people in attendance could’ve behaved better, but the NYPD also did not need to step in for something as simple as a snowball fight. The one thing I do agree with is the mayor’s stance that the NYPD overreacted to this, especially in charging Coulibaly with a misdemeanor.
In other parts of the city, people were enjoying their snow day by building snowmen, having snowball fights, making snow angels and so much more. At Fordham Rose Hill’s campus, there was also a massive snowball fight on Eddie’s.
Hypothetically, if someone were to call Public Safety because a snowball were thrown at their face, Public Safety would come to break up the fight and also get a snowball thrown at them; it would be crazy for University President Tania Tetlow to ban snowball fights because a Public Safety officer was hit with a snowball.
Students would say this would be an overexaggeration from Tetlow, and it’s impossible to imagine this ever actually happening. Therefore, Mamdani taking the opposing lane is a reasonable answer for a lot of people because no one deserves to be punished for having fun in a snowball fight.
Gabriel Capellan, FCRH ’28, is a journalism major from The Bronx, New York.
