The Impact News

Issue date: 5/5/07 Section: News

A night's supply of beer. A triangle formation of red plastic cups. Two cups for water, and a ping-pong ball or two. If you were to give college students this equation, they'd probably tell you it equaled a good time.

Many young adults have found themselves enjoying the rite of passage that is a night of Beer Pong (also known as Beirut), especially as they advance through college. A typical game of beer pong involves two "teams" of one to two players each, standing on opposite ends of a 10-foot (or otherwise long) table. In front of each team are plastic cups, filled with beer and arranged in a triangle formation (see diagram). Rules vary by region: some use one ping-pong ball, some use two; some play with six cups, some play with ten. But the basics of the game remain standard: toss a ping pong ball across the length of the table and try and to put it in one of your opponent's plastic cups. If you can successfully make a shot in your challenger's cup, the person is required to drink the corresponding beer.

The object of the game? Make the other team drink all their beer before they make you drink yours. The finer details of the game are open for debate, but no matter which version of Beer Pong you play, the motives are the same: it's a night of friendly competition with good friends and good beer (but remember, kids: the Impact does not condone underage drinking-New York State law says you must be at least 21 years old to drink legally!).

Clearly, this is an enjoyable game, played in many different social circles. But many students get so caught up in the heat of the moment that they don't realize they're consuming more than their favorite alcoholic beverage. Recent research has shown that swimming in those cups is a myriad of bacteria-and students may not even realize what they're ingesting.

Senior students Aaron Heffner and Ben Morrissey of George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., recently conducted an experiment in their microbiology class to determine how unsanitary a standard game of beer pong could potentially be. They knew from the very beginning that their findings wouldn't be too positive; ping-pong balls used during Beer Pong have a tendency to fall on the floor and roll into nasty places, like under couches. And even though each team is provided with a water cup on the side of their triangle formation specifically to clean off a wayward ping-pong ball, there are only so many advantages that two or three dunks into a plastic cup filled with water can provide. "It was pretty obvious what we were going to find. It's pretty clear that Beer Pong isn't exactly a clean game," said Heffner, according to the GW Hatchet, George Washington University's student newspaper.

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