THOMAS JEFFERSON said a lot of things. And a lot of them are written down on the books, buildings, papers and walls that make up his university. But lost among his other sage advice is the only quote I'd put on my wall: "Devote at least two hours a day to beer pong, for a drunk student is a happy student and a fit servant of the Republic."
Don't believe it? Well, I don't blame you. But whatever Jefferson's opinion of beer pong, his university would be a dreary place without it. As you prepare to spread your wings and join the Academical Village this fall, devote at least a few hours to beer pong. And when you land, may you find yourself at the bottom of a beer, on a friendly porch, on a starry night in Charlottesville.
Beer pong is the simplest of games. Four players in two teams of two stand at opposite ends of a long table. Before each team stand six cups in triangular pattern, each filled with beer. The teams take turns tossing ping pong balls into each other's cups; any beers thus hit are consumed by the opposing team and removed from the table. The first team to hit six wins.
It's an elegant arrangement, but fiendishly complex once play begins. Unlike quarters or kings, which cater to the basest instincts of their sodden players, beer pong demands grace of the sloppiest drunks. There are no coins to bounce nor cups to smash, but a 38 millimeter ball to be sent skyward by nimble hands. The task demands careful coordination of feet and fingers and hands and eyes.
Mastery of emotion is equally necessary to success at beer pong, for the ball is a fickle missile. Its flight is easily impaired by nerves and poor confidence and the beer ponger must banish both from his mind. Whatever his alcohol consumption, it is the disciplined player who can endure a series of misses, stand stone-faced before his opponent and sink a winning shot.
But at its heart, beer pong is a system for bringing order to alcoholism. Like the Academical Village, the beer pong table is a composition of circles and angles that compels reason of all comers. By its lines, the mess of college drinking is divided into shots, turns, cups, beers and games. In the highest Jeffersonian tradition, beer pong calls upon its players to abandon their hedonistic habits and imbibe according rule and rationality. Beer pong takes drinking and subjects it to law.
And like law, beer pong is a jealous mistress. More lovely than your studies, she will tempt you whenever the sun graces your doorstep and four friends find themselves with time to spare. A glance and a nod and a trip to the store are all that's needed to begin the game and soon all players will slide effortlessly into the warm embrace of drunken order.
Like other sports, beer pong instills a spirit of camaraderie in its players even as it spurs them to heated competition. Every group of guys thinks they are the best, and they will close ranks to defend a table against outsiders. But even hostile factions can find common ground between their cups and common memory in the act of shooting, their hands tossing the same ball in the same arc as a thousand times before.
The best games are those between old friends, squared off for the hundredth time on a warm summer night. When the weather is right, the crowd small and the beer ample, there is no finer diversion than to rinse out the cups and try your luck at beer pong. Each player knows his opponents' form, style and strategy, and his only adjustment will be to the easy rhythm of shooting and bouncing, dipping and drinking.
When Jefferson died, they found among his personal effects a letter to his friend James Madison. "My Dear Friend," it read, "I can but hope that in years hence, the students of the University of Virginia will take their recreation at beer pong, for I can conceive of no other activity so suited to the interests of our Republic nor so conducive to the brotherhood of men."
Don't go looking for these lines when you turn up in August, because they're not printed on paper nor etched in stone. They're to be found on the hearts of Jefferson's students, on a thousand backyard tables and a thousand starry nights in Charlottesville.
(Alec Solotorovsky is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at asolotorovsky@cavalierdaily.com)
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