Five students showed their Buckeye spirit by sculpting the Script Ohio from Tuesday night’s snow. The masterminds behind the snow sculpture were Calvin Goodman, a first-year in computer science and engineering, and Matt Elliott, a second-year in marketing.
The two had a conversation last Friday about what to do with the mountains of untouched snow.
Goodman decided that because everyone else was sticking to “Frosty the Snowman,” he wanted to create a snow version of “Brutus the Buckeye.”
After two hours of building they completed a fully sculpted, free-standing “snow Brutus” at Taylor Tower. Unfortunately, like many campus-area sculptures, Brutus survived only two hours: Someone kicked its legs and it came tumbling down.
Although he was disappointed about the ruined Brutus, Goodman did not accept defeat.
While sitting in an engineering class, Goodman thought of other ways to show his Ohio State pride. He came up with the idea to sculpt the Script Ohio, made famous by the OSU Marching Band.
Almost as soon as the idea popped into his head, Goodman rushed to Elliott and said, “Come on, we’re going to build the Script Ohio!”
There was no major design process but the planning took an hour.
“I laid out a line where I thought the script would be most visible and started with the small ‘O’ on the right,” Goodman said. “From there we just made everything proportional and worked from right to left.”
Goodman and Elliott, along with three other friends, used shovels and their hands to build the snow tribute. They used a stick to hold up the delicate dotted “I.”
The dot on the “I” was ceremoniously placed just as the marching band would do it, with Goodman running, bowing, then placing it on top.
Goodman said there were no breaks taken in the building process.
The team worked three-and-a-half hours to complete the project.
He is predicting the sculpture, located at Taylor Tower next to the basketball courts facing Curl Drive, should stand for a week-depending on temperature and how much people respect it.
There were risky moments in building the sculpture. At one point, two University Police officers stopped the team and asked, “Do you know about vandalism?”
“They sounded really serious, ” McCray said, “and we were like, umm…”
But then the officers smiled and said, “We’re just kidding!”
Once again surprising the students, the officers then took photos of the team building their sculpture.
Bumper stickers say “I bleed scarlet and gray,” but Kyle Harper, a second-year in food science, took that to heart; he cut his ï¬nger on the shovel, but patched it up and continued to help.
As the night went on, the sculpture-building faced adversity. The snow became icy instead of fluffy, making it more difficult to pack the snow.
There were some breaks in the pillars before adding the top of the letters, causing a few minor issues. McCray said getting the loops in the “O” and “H” took the most patience and work.
At least 200 people came and took pictures throughout the building process, the team said.
A friend of Goodman texted him saying, “You will be on the cover of every freshman pamphlet from now until forever.”
The team created a Facebook page called “SNOHIO,” which they say they hope will get 10,000 fans.
