On October 24^th, 2017, an email went out to a select few students regarding the theme for an on campus dance, The Student Nursing Organization (SNO) Ball.

Unfortunately, an error made in a response to this email, causing a school-wide commentary on dance themes, with a particular interest in a discussion of meatballs. This was sparked by a comment from Luke Weiss, who sent an email containing the following message:

“It’s tropical you half a meatball.”

The remark was intended as a joke, replying to another student, Austin Gray, who made a simple grammatical error. “I think it should be a topically theme,” said Gray.

The situation quickly turned into quite the spectacle, as students from every corner of campus quickly took hold of the opportunity to have some fun in the post mid-term era of the semester.

Concerns about the presence of meatballs at the ball appeared first. From there, the meatball movement was in full swing.

Campaigns and hashtags came flooding in. A survey detailing the desire for meatballs to be present at the ball was posted by Austin Gray to Survey Monkey, a popular website used to create interactive polls, and linked to everyone.

Students began to Photoshop images based on the situation, much like the attached image sent by Zachery Salek, featuring Frankie the Friar with a meatball for a head.

One student even went so far as to create a sign-up sheet for a “Meatball Club” on campus. An SFU group message about meatballs was made on the messaging app GroupMe.

The joke did eventually come to an end: the group behind the initial blunder placed a filter on the email chain, ensuring that each new email from that point on would go through them before going to the rest of the school.

The SNO Ball is to be held early 2018, and it looks to be another successful event for students to enjoy. Whether or not meatballs will be present is to be determined.