Why not Beirut?

The “real” Dart­mouth?I thought. Well then, you’ll want to playbeer pong.

"Please," she said. "I know how to pong. I pong like it’s no­body’s busi­ness."

"Ah," I replied. "But do you Dart­mouth pong? With pad­dles with the han­dles sawn off?"

"Good­ness," she ex­claimed. "That’s a whole dif­fer­ent game..."

As many of you al­ready know, the ori­gin of beer pong can be traced back to the base­ment of some fra­ter­nity here at our beloved col­lege, as stu­dents of the 1960s sought to en­ter­tain them­selves be­tween im­ports of LSD and cannabis. As the na­tion ad­mir­ingly ob­served the Dart­mouth gen­tle­men’s sport, var­i­ous col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties adopted their own vari­a­tions of beer pong — an ac­tiv­ity that is cur­rently used to de­ter­mine alpha male sta­tus and is the No. 1 date ac­tiv­ity for stu­dents.

So in­te­gral is beer pong to Amer­i­can stu­dent life that a new bev­er­age has re­cently been launched, the imag­i­na­tively named“Pong Beer”.

Most cam­puses throw the ball. We at Dart­mouth pad­dle it.

But why not skip the soggy pad­dle and try a game of Beirut?

If you're dar­ing, spice it up with some rules com­piled by theIn­ter­na­tional Busi­ness Times— that you may or may not fol­low:

Death Cup:If your op­po­nent gets the ball into the cup of beer from which you are drink­ing, you lose the game im­me­di­ately. And the girl that you were part­nered with.

Bounc­ing:This is when you aim the ball at the table rather than the cup — risky busi­ness, but higher re­wards. If the bounce is suc­cess­ful, your op­po­nent must pick up two cups of beer. How­ever, once the bounce has oc­curred, your op­po­nent is al­lowed to grab the ball or bat it away.

Balls Back: If you and your part­ner are suc­cess­ful in get­ting the ball into the cup, you get an­other go. Your op­po­nents have to suck it up.

Is­land:Tricky. Very tricky. This is where you state be­fore­hand which cup you are aim­ing for — the “is­land.” If your aim is true, your op­po­nents must drink two cups in­stead of one. How­ever, if co­or­di­na­tion was never your strong point and you miss, you must drink two of your own cups. De­bate con­tin­ues over how many times you can call “is­land” dur­ing a game.

On Fire:To achieve this very spe­cial sta­tus, you must suc­cess­fully hit two cups in a row, then de­clare to the en­tire fra­ter­nity, “I’m heat­ing up!” If you are suc­cess­ful a third time, you are of­fi­cially “on fire.” Check you out.

Be­hind the Back:Some­how you have to take a shot from be­hind your back. I’ve never seen this done. Prob­a­bly be­cause too many drunk stu­dents have hurt them­selves at­tempt­ing to do so.

Re-Racks:This is where you po­litely re­quest your op­po­nent re­or­ga­nize their cups into the shape of a tri­an­gle, square, straight line, as­tro­log­i­cal struc­ture, cir­cum­cised penis — it’s your call.

Re­demp­tion and Over­time:The losers can have a shot at their op­po­nents’ re­main­ing cups. If suc­cess­ful, they go into over­time. Clearly a rule for the sore losers.

Naked Lap:Why, why, why, WHY is this rule not en­forced more often? This is where the losers are forced to strip and run around the out­side of their fra­ter­nity, to the hoots and cat-calls of their broth­ers. And don’t even try to blame every­thing on the cold.