A few weeks ago I was assigned a story for TNH about a massive snowball fight that occurred in the 70s at UNH. Apparently the National Guard was called in and it was a really big deal. I was given the name of the former student who had given us the lead and I arranged to meet with him. We met on campus and I was instantly thrown by his appearance. He seemed to be some sort of old hippie, which is fine, but it surprised. So, we got to talking and he told me all about the snowball, saying that it started at Stoke and eventually spread to the rest of campus. He told me how the frats started throwing ice balls and that that's when things got bad. He said that windows were getting broken and people were getting hurt. He started getting very dramatic and I began to wonder if he was over exaggerating about some things. He said that the damages totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars. As if this wasn't enough of a clue that the story wasn't completely factual, the guy couldn't even remember what year this alleged snowball fight happened in. He said it was sometime between 1972 and 74.
So, I had all of my notes from the guy but I knew that I needed some sort of verification that it was true. I went to the library and had to go through a lot of trouble to access the TNH archives from the 70s. The librarians started by telling me that they had never heard of the snowball and that they had been around in the 70s. I asked for the archives anyways and after about 45 minutes of looking through the years that he had mentioned, I had nothing. I relayed this to my editor who then spent almost an hour himself searching through the archives of Foster's Daily Democrat. He also found nothing.
At this point I was starting to get frustrated and was worried that the guy just made everything up. After about six calls to a couple different police stations, I found out that they didn't have records going back that far and they couldn't verify if the story was real. I talked to people in each station that had been there since the 70s and none of them remembered it happening. My editor then suggested that I call a class president from one of those years so I chose 1973 since it was in the middle and he had most likely been around for all three of the years that the guy had mentioned. After a few attempts to contact the class president, I was finally able to ask him if it was true. His response was simple. It never happened. He told me that he had personally been involved in many snowball fights on campus, but none of them ever caused extreme damages or had police involvement.
Overall, I was pretty upset. For one, I had already told all my friends and family this super awesome story. And second, I was lied to. This guy completely lied right to my face for no apparent reason. I'm not sure why he did it and what he got out of that, but it really annoys me. My editor suggested that I write him an email letting him know that I wasn't pleased, but I think I'd rather just avoid the conflict and let it go. It taught me the importance of getting a secondary source though. I would have hated to have written that story without double checking it first and realizing after it was published that it had been made up. So, even though I'm upset by this, I'm happy that I've at least walked away with a valuable lesson.
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