Idiots Abound

So there are a number of things that I have found out along the way being on college campuses of late that absolutely blow my mind and make me wonder how we seem to be getting exponentially more asinine with each generation.  The proof here should be that students will openly discuss/explain this behavior, proudly I might add, in a classroom setting.

First, "beer pong."  The name of the game should suggest this would be a game similar to ping pong but with beer involved in some way.  Refresher, ping pong is played on a table with a net, not unlike tennis, and paddles instead of rackets.  At some point along the way someone at Dartmouth College, the inspiration for the movie Animal House, I should say movie classic, decided that if you put a cup at either end of the table and fill it with beer the game could get more interesting.  Like most drinking games, beer pong was created to bring sport into the weekend festivities on  a college campus.  The rules were incredibly simple, hit the cup, in the natural course of playing ping pong and when the point is ended that player has to take a sip of beer.  Sink the ball in the cup and not only do you get a point in the game, but that player then has to chug the beer.  Ping pong is a fun game with a group of people and since the ping pong table is always in the basement of the fraternity, as is the keg (s), only made sense to combine the two activities.

Again, point of beer pong in the 80s:  have some beers with friends while playing a time honored game.

Fast forward to the beginning of the 21st century, Stanley Kubrick's century, and you will find that the tables have been taking out of the stale beer, sticky floored basements of fraternities, and have been replaced on lawns on college campuses across the country by anything college students can find, even the bathroom door, laying across two saw horses, or anything else similar.  The net is gone and the paddles are no longer used.  Also, the one cup has been replaced by 10 cups on each end, and this is no longer the same game with the same purpose.  The purpose is now to throw, or drop, the ping pong ball, nice of them to at least keep that token in the game, into one of the ten cups on the other end of the table, door, and every time you do the other team has to chug a beer, both players.  The game takes less time, and 10 time the beer is consumed as before.

Point of the game: get as drunk as possible as fast as possible in order to relieve all parties present of their inhibitions and maybe more importantly their responsibility for their own behavior.

Results, as told by students in classes I have been teaching on a college campus that remain nameless:

1. Two separate women from two different classes and two different houses on campus both told stories of falling down their stares over Halloween weekend and not remembering a thing, waking up bruised and sore and having to be told by "friends" what happened.  The stories were eerily similar and both "women" were proud to be telling these stories.
2. College students have come to believe that once a "friend," or stranger for that matter, passes out at a party, if their shoes are on then they are "fair game."  This is the one that really disturbs me.  This means that they can be, and will be more often than not, written on in permanent marker, drawn on, tied up, duct taped, stripped, moved out to the front lawn...and this is the short list.

Common human decency is gone on college campuses across the country.  I have good friends coaching in colleges from Denver to DC and back and although you would hope it would be different at the so called "better" schools, the Stanfords, the Dartmouths and so on, and unfortunately, if anything it is worse.  Apparently stupidity knows no economic barriers.  I will tell you that I have seen parents that are just as bad or worse, and so you can see where it came from, but it is still troubling.  As a coach all I can do is have the conversations, share my views, and enforce rules put in place and then hope that we can affect some change.

I will tell you that the courses were actually stats courses that I have taught in multiple places and thus what is above is actually a combination of stories told in class as part of "ice breakers," and information that came out as part of group projects and presentations.  I have also been close enough to my players over the years to have seen some of this behavior while trying to remove players from these situations.

College students should have fun, enjoy the "college experience," and build lasting friendships and memories.  I just wish more of these friendships and memories didn't require an ensemble to tell the story because the individuals have trouble remembering in total.