President Schall barely misses an overhead balloon filled with colored water during Oglethorpe’s Holi Color Festival in March. Holi is celebrated in India to welcome spring, and the occasion is marked each year when hundreds of people playfully splatter their neighbors with colored powder and water.

In this week’s online edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education,  Oglethorpe President Larry Schall shares his thoughts about experiencing campus life during the opening week of OU Museum of Art’s Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest exhibit in March.

To celebrate the exhibition’s arrival on campus, OU students organized several events—including an Indian Holi color festival on the quad (read: water balloon fight Oglethorpe-style)  and a screening of the film Slumdog Millionaire.  In the article the Chronicle titled “A College President Puts Down His Pencil for a Water Balloon,” President Schall writes:

“I knew most of the kids who had arrived early, and they teased me about wearing a suit and tie to the event. I had no intention whatsoever of joining their water-balloon fight and had, in fact, deliberately worn a suit for the specific purpose of avoiding any involvement…But as I watched the students get ready for their “spring bath,” the thought crossed my mind: Didn’t I have some shorts and a T-shirt in the trunk of my car?… Ten minutes later, barefoot and dressed for the gym, I was leading a charge across the lawn, armed with a half-dozen balloons of my own…for a brief moment, I was transported back 40 years to my college days. (Although, to be honest, I’m not sure I ever had that much fun in college–at least that I can remember.)” Click here for the full article.