It’s very hard to imagine this happening now. The students are far more subtle in their menacing techniques these days:
I’ve written about both of the teachers who got pelted here before, Edgar Altenburg here and George Williams ’23 here. In spite of this rude treatment both spent their entire careers at Rice.
Bonus: This is my naughty grandson trying to knock over his sister’s snowman.
We have all taken off the week to go skiing. I’ll be back next Monday.
That was extremely tolerant of these two professors to allow themselves to be pelted by snowballs without retribution. At a northern school such as the University of Chicago or Dartmouth, the students would have been hauled off and expelled. The uniqueness of a Houston snowfall must have been the reason for the tolerance.
George Williams was a legend at Rice. He taught my first semester of freshman English in 1956. He never sought or earned a PhD. so I suppose that is why he was only “Associate Professor” in the 1957 Campanile. I don’t know when he retired. but he lived to the ripe old age of 98. He’s in Wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_G._Williams