Senior Aaron Whittle knows how to throw a good party: invite a few friends over, fetch a case of Bud Light and trudge to the basement to play beer pong.
Beer pong is not mere recreation. It has spawned national tournaments, its own World Series and a marketing industry for specialized beer pong tables with bloated $99-and-growing price tags.
Whittle’s own beer pong table cost $600 – and he and his roommate designed, built and painted it together last year. The table, a near replica of the Baker football field, took a week to finish but it’s already earned its keep. Whittle’s house hosts at least three games a week and more on the weekends.
In beer pong, players fling Ping-Pong balls into a cup, which is usually filled with beer. If you sink a ball, your opponent has to drink.
Whittle and his roommates don’t pour the beer into the cups. Spilled beer and dirty Ping-Pong balls stirred them to replace the alcohol with water and slog back on a can of beer instead. And, of course, Whittle didn’t want beer to permeate the table’s paint job.
Part of the game’s lure is competition. Making a ball into the last cup is a triumph – a victory that can create an explosion of high-fives and fist-pounds. But the game also serves a social function.
“It’s a good way to meet somebody,” Whittle said. “It serves big as an ice-breaker. You see a girl and you’re just like ‘Hey, I need a partner.'”
Beer pong can douse anxiety, grease the wheels to friendships and cause conversations to burst to life.
But alcohol can do that without games. Senior Jackie Cordes likes to drink because it weakens her social anxiety.
“I’m kind of a shy person and so I use (alcohol) as a social lubricant,” Cordes said. “Even if I know a lot of the people there, I’m still more comfortable being around a lot of people if I’ve had a drink or two.”
Cordes tries to be careful when it comes to drinking – she’s seen what it can do. One night when Cordes was in high school, she got a call from a friend that fiddled with her view of the world. Cordes’ boyfriend, a football player, had won his game that night. He promptly celebrated by drinking large amounts of alcohol. The friend on the phone asked Cordes to come pick her drunken boyfriend up.
“You’re sober, and he needs to go to a doctor,” the friend said.
Cordes hauled her boyfriend to the hospital.
“He died that night,” Cordes said. “I was at the hospital with him when it happened. It really opened my eyes to the fact that bad things can happen to anyone, no matter how much of a star they think they are.”
When her friends drink, Cordes watches them with a shrewd eye. If she thinks they’ve had too much, she’s the first to act. One night last year, a friend drank so much his breathing and heartbeat became sluggish. Then he became unresponsive. Cordes called the police. The decision didn’t come easy.
People at the party pelted Cordes with opposing arguments. He’ll be fine. He’ll sleep it off. He doesn’t need to get in trouble for this.
“There was opposition for getting police involved because of the repercussions that could come upon (everyone),” Cordes said. “But the doctors said it was definitely a good thing we brought him in. He didn’t even remember drinking his last drink.”
Ruth Sarna, director of student health services, worries that some students won’t have the courage to make that call.
“If you think your friend has had too much to drink, it’s much better to be safe than sorry,” Sarna said. “You may have a friend who’s really, really angry at you, but that friend will be alive.”
Beer pong has received some flack for contributing to binge drinking on college campuses but Whittle believes beer pong is a safe way to have a good time.
“You definitely have to be of age to drink, and if you drink too much there are going to be consequences to that, but it’s not dangerous at all by any means if you play responsibly,” Whittle said.