# Cheerleader dry ice incident **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [August 21, 2003, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-dry-ice-incident/196578 "2003-08-21T02:53:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![skeptic53](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@skeptic53](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skeptic53)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2003, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-dry-ice-incident/196578/1 "2003-08-21T02:53:27Z")
re: [http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdryice.html](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdryice.html) I read the report about dry ice, surprised that something so mundane made it to the daily top spot. I remembered a news report from here in the Northwest from some years back and went looking for it on the internet. I found some quotes of it. It sounds a lot like an urban legend, but I could not find it on any of the urban legend web sites, and I do remember reading about it in the local paper. One of the sites attributes the quote to the Portland Oregonian, November 12 1993. The Oregonian web site doesn’t have archives older than 2 weeks, so I could not confirm it. Here’s the quote, with the web site’s snarky comments removed from [Yucks Digest V3 #36 (shorts)](http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/homes/spaf/Yucks/V3/msg00035.html) : _The Oregonian_, Friday, Nov. 12, 1993: SILVERTON – Dick Kromminga, principal at Silverton High School, said a pep rally stunt last week that burned four students won’t ever be repeated. The four suffered severe burns on their buttocks from sitting on blocks of dry ice. “We pulled a brain-deader, and we will make sure we don’t do it again,” Kromminga said. The girls were chosen by their classmates for a stunt last week to see who could sit on the ice the longest. Dry ice, or solid carbon dioxide, can be as cold as 112 degrees below zero. The four were treated at Silverton Hospital. Dr. Frank Lord said some of the girls may need skin grafts. “The truth is, I’ve never seen any frostbite on this part of the anatomy,” he said. Kromminga said the ice-sitting skit was the idea of the school’s cheerleaders and the pep assembly adviser. Plans for skits normally are approved by the assistant principal and activities coordinator, but that didn’t happen this time because the assembly was held a day earlier than usual. Kromminga said he didn’t think the pep assembly adviser mentioned that the girls were going to sit on dry ice. “That might have caught somebody’s attention,” he said. The girls had been chosen by their respective classes as princesses of the “touchdown court” with the winner to be crowned at a dance after the Friday night football game. The girls wore jeans and football jerseys. At the end of the assembly, several of them said their buttocks felt numb and frozen. No disciplinary action is planned. In the future, Kromminga said, all pep assembly activities will be presented to his staff and approved 24 hours before the event. ---
**Author:** ![Roches](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bc8723/32.png) [@Roches](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roches)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2003, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-dry-ice-incident/196578/2 "2003-08-24T07:33:43Z")
They must have had to look around for a _block_ of dry ice – I’ve only seen it in pellets. I guess I can’t protest a Fahrenheit temperature in an American newspaper – but (at 1 atm) -112°F is about the _warmest_ that dry ice can be. CO2 sublimes above -78°C (-108°F). Dry ice can be anything between that and absolute zero, and mixtures of various liquids with dry ice can be colder than -78°C even at room temperature. I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t try to see who could keep their hands in a bucket of dry ice and ethyl alcohol the longest… What I _really_ want to know is who exactly they were trying to impress with this (if it’s not an urban legend, which it definitely seems like). It sounds more like the kind of thing football players would do… I’ve never heard ‘brain-deader’ before. I guess high school students need a whole range of terms to describe different types and degrees of stupidity. =] ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-dry-ice-incident/196578/3 "2003-08-25T03:55:01Z")
I’ve never seen dry ice pellets. My grocery stores sells dry ice in small blocks, up to brick size. Ditto the stuff we used in my old college Thermo lab and the dry ice we begged off the ice cream truck as kids. I think getting a block big enough to sit on from an ice supplier is no problem. ---
**Author:** ![Ticklesome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@Ticklesome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ticklesome)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2003, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheerleader-dry-ice-incident/196578/4 "2003-08-26T22:37:36Z")
Another true story about wrong headed application of ice. Radio station fined early this year for injuring punters’ buttocks [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2691229.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2691229.stm)