I am currently a senior at Emory University and though I have spent four years on this campus, I barely recognize the school that I had fallen in love with. There have been many dining changes, such as the revamping of Cox Hall and the addition of both Dunkin’ Donuts and Highland Bakery. There have been significant faculty changes, such as the recent hiring of the decorated Erika James as the Goizueta Business School’s new dean.
However, the change that’s been an absolute misstep has been the so-called cracking down on the social scene. While I believe it is necessary to monitor the student body in their extracurricular activities, it can be said that Emory is taking the absolute incorrect approach in doing so.
The grievance in this situation is the ban on beer pong. For those who don’t know, Emory has banned all drinking games on campus, including beer pong. Some might view this as a joke, but this is a serious matter that, if rectified properly, could help realign the student body with the administration, thus forging a better ground for collaboration on future efforts such as student safety.
Emory’s ban on drinking games comes from the right place: to prevent students from recklessly ingesting alcohol in short amounts of time. However, the fundamental principles of beer pong do not allow for this to occur. This is a game of skill and accuracy, both of which decline as the player becomes further inebriated. Once a player loses, they must wait along the sidelines for the next available game, thus preventing excessive binge drinking. Additionally, space is needed for this game, and in a group situation, playing beer pong could potentially take up most to all of the space in a given area. Thus, the participants are less inclined to take part in other drinking activities, and more inclined to wait their turn to play, allowing the body to try to keep up with the alcohol ingestion.
The other perspective to look at here is what students are doing instead of playing beer pong, the staple of college life at universities throughout the country. Instead of spending hours drinking beer, which has the lowest alcohol content among popular alcoholic beverages in this demographic, students have resorted to buying handles of liquor and hard alcohol, which they mix into drinks and ingest as quickly as possible.
With beer, drinkers will “get full,” which essentially acts as a meter for how much they have drank that evening. Because the volume of liquid consumed is smaller, many new drinkers are unaware of their tolerance levels. These students become more intoxicated than they can even comprehend, which leads to a visible increase in Emergency Medical Service (EMS) calls campus-wide.
As a senior, I believe that this is unacceptable. College is a place to have fun and learn more about oneself through play and experimentation, but this sort of risky behavior, which clearly puts lives at risk, needs to be rebuffed. I’m not saying that college kids are going to stop drinking hard alcohol if beer pong is once again allowed on campus, but having the option and the ability to find a balance in one’s social activities will certainly create a safer environment than we currently have here on campus.
The Emory Wheel‘s editorial board wrote in their Sept. 11, 2014 staff editorial “Greek Life Walkthroughs Reasonable” that these walkthroughs are necessary and appropriately strict. I believe that, because Emory has used their walkthroughs as a policing force instead of a way to work with their students, they are effectively rendering these walkthroughs useless. The “parent-child” relationship the article refers to is a farce. The school is unjustly taking away privileges in a power grab to remind members of Greek Life that they are at the school’s mercy.
The staff editorial mentions how activity will be brought off-campus, where the school has no jurisdiction and very little means of monitoring behavior. Additionally, the editorial notes how this could lead to drunk driving. The editorial is absolutely correct in this regard. However, if these walkthroughs were used to help the fraternities, potentially by working with executive members to identify those in the house who have possibly had too much to drink either before or after entering or by identifying situations where serious harm could be incurred, the fraternities would feel more comfortable using their houses more often.
The tradeoff here is allowing kids to play beer pong in their house so that they stay in their house and thus the school can more effectively monitor and prevent risky behavior. Walkthroughs can be effective, but using it as a way to prevent beer pong is absolutely unnecessary.
A truth of college life is that students are going to drink. They will find ways to obtain alcohol. As an administration, there is really only one way to deal with this absolute truth: to work alongside the student body and be aware of what is happening. Drinking games are, for many, a part of the college experience. Beer pong is part of the college experience for many students. But from an administrative perspective, beer pong provides a relatively safer way for college students to ingest alcohol, as opposed to sneaking around, solely drinking bottles of much harder alcohol that can cause serious damage.
Emory has the opportunity to become more in touch with their student body while also taking steps in the right direction to make the University a safer place. Thus, I come to the administration with the plea to take advantage of this valuable opportunity for the well being of its student body. Please bring back beer pong.
– Jayson Patel is a Goizueta Business School senior from Livingston, New Jersey.
The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.
The Wheel is financially and editorially independent from the University. All of its content is generated by the Wheel’s more than 100 student staff members and contributing writers, and its printing costs are covered by profits from self-generated advertising sales.
Couldn’t agree more with everything said here. Graduating last year, I left Emory at the perfect time (could have maybe left a year or two earlier, to be honest). Truth is, I would HATE being a freshman there now. Emory administration has a completely warped view on how to monitor what is going on and the control they have over the situation. If any Emory higher-up is reading this, please be aware that the ENTIRE STUDENT BODY FEELS THIS WAY. YOU ARE RUINING THE COLLEGE EXPERIENCE FOR EVERYONE THAT ATTENDS EMORY AND IS EXPECTING TO HAVE ANY AMOUNT OF ENJOYMENT. The amount of money I paid not just to be a part of the Emory community, but also to my fraternity warrants better than what you have given me these past couple of years. If you are 21, you should be able to play pong. Period. Any argument otherwise is absurd. I am going to drink – this is a fact. You telling me I can’t throw a fucking plastic ball in a cup to do so is not going to stop me. It’s going to encourage me to binge drink to assert my rights. Emory truly has become a joke. I have actively discouraged multiple prospective students from going there during my senior year and will continue to do so. Social life is a big part of the college experience. Take that away and see where it gets you. I’m genuinely ashamed of the direction social life Emory is headed.
You have got to be kidding me right? Are you really setting out a plea to bring beer pong back? Saying it’s “a staple” of college life is assuming that drinking culture is inevitable to participate in when you get to college. As much as I’d like to engage in this argument (sarcasm), you fail at assuming only beer is drunken in these instances. Making the claim that EMS calls will go up without beer pong is ludicrous.
Ahh the things important to Emory students…
Sorry man, the research says that frequent participation in drinking games is associated with more “negative drinking consequences” than infrequent participation in drinking games, regardless of the amount of alcohol students consume while playing (Zamboanga et al., 2010, The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse). Further, taking the position that “A truth of college life is that students are going to drink” is in itself contributing to a harmful drinking culture:
“[M]any college students think campus attitudes are much more permissive toward drinking than they really are and believe other students drink much more than they actually do. The phenomenon of perceived social norms — or the belief that “everyone” is drinking and drinking is acceptable — is one of the strongest correlates of drinking among young adults.” — the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s Task Force on College Drinking, from their report “What Colleges Need to Know Now: An Update on College Drinking Research”
Wait…so what you’re saying is Emory is becoming a joke because it doesn’t sustain your ideals of a social life? Call me crazy, but Emory is a provider of knowledge and opportunity, not some place that facilitates drunken debauchery. Good thing you discouraged those students from coming here solely on your social experience because if all they wanted to do was get wasted for four years, then I don’t think I would have wanted them here anyways.
While I agree that the administration is ruining traditional social life on campus, your arguments are not very strong.
I am just as pissed as you are, though. I came here with a certain expectation which was satisfied for my first 2 years at Emory, but has since been completely turned on its head. It will come back to haunt them the most when I look back on college and realize that I got a job because I networked and that all the administration did for me was make my life more stressful and less fun. Who am I going to donate to then?