If I may play Captain Obvious for a moment, I’d like to note that we saw a significant amount of snow for the first time since I’ve been at N.C. State on Tuesday.And where there is snow, there are snowball fights — this immutable fact is something I learned the hard way on the cold streets of a small town in upstate New York.But one combination I never would have imagined is the classic snowball fight with police brutality.Yet after this weekend, that changed — reports out of Greenville state East Carolina University’s campus police arrested one student, tackled another and used pepper spray on a group of students. Admittedly, in the last case, the students did charge the officers who were trying to make an arrest.But seriously: pepper spray?Thankfully, the snowball fights around campus did not attract the riot police or require the Raleigh Police Department’s SWAT team to move in. Still, the lesson needs to be learned: we have got to make sure Campus Police don’t use pepper spray to break up an old-fashioned snowball fight.Excessive use of force by the police is not a new phenomenon on college campuses. 40 years ago, America saw some of the worst acts of police brutality, which was at first a response to the uproar and subsequent riots surrounding the passage of Civil Rights legislation and later acted to crush protests to America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.As far as crime enforcement went, this marked a move away from rehabilitative efforts of previous years and more toward a strict law-and-order approach to crime and disorder: unleash the cops, lock the rioters and protesters up and use whatever force was required to maintain peace in the streets.Yet even with such an approach, some historical accounts of the period noted cops who felt the brutal police tactics of the 1960s weren’t brutal enough.And the tear gas and billy club tactics of police in the years of flower power were in response to mass looting, snipers in the streets and major acts of arson.But we are talking about a snowball fight for crying out loud — unless someone’s got a Randy Johnson fastball and is throwing a piece of ice, the chances of severe, disfiguring injuries or death are slim.On the other hand, getting beaten with a night stick, hit in the face with a stream of pepper spray or getting tased may have some serious physical side effects.I am not advocating for taking these things from police officers — in given situations, these devices may enable officers to disable an offender without requiring lethal force.But what needs to be done, especially given the circumstances of the ECU incident, is for campus police forces to establish strict guidelines regarding the proportional use of force.The bottom line: a fierce fight filled with people hurling snow at each other as fast as possible does not constitute a campus-threatening riot.Send your thoughts on police and snowball fights to [email protected].