When I was in undergrad some of my friends and I were eating a late dinner in the dining hall when someone came in to say that someone had fallen in the river. It was the middle of winter at the time, so when we rushed out we saw that a man had fallen through the ice, perhaps while trying to cross, and was clinging to the edge of the hole while half submerged. He was pretty far out and we didn’t know how stable the ice was, so we tied our scarves together and bound them to a thick stick. I had to try a few times but eventually succeeded in throwing the weighted end to him and dragging him to the bank. Unfortunately the dude was really unpleasant and said something horribly racist to a black woman who was standing with us, apropos of nothing. We left immediately after ensuring that he was no longer in mortal peril, as it looked like news vehicles were starting to show up and we didn’t want any part of that.