ping pong table: The Birth of Beer Pong

By Jennifer Garfinkel

The air is humid, stagnant and reeks of beer. Ping-pong balls zip back and forth across 9-by-5 sheets of solid wood straddled across garbage cans. A Friday night at Dartmouth Collge is well underway.
Pong is the main staple of Dartmouth's Greek-dominated social scene. An October 2005 atricle in The New York Times about the perils of drinking games labeled Dartmouth the official founder of pong. Unofficial College historian and history professor emeritus Jere Daniell '55 recalls playing pong in its most primitive form when he was a member of Alpha Theta fraternity between 1952 and 1955. "I'm not even sure it had a name," Daniell says.

By agreeing to attend Dartmouth, it seems one agrees to embrace and cherish the sport. And players today, whether or not they realize it, are partaking in a pastime that has come a long way from the original game.

Humble Beginnings
Many Dartmouth alum say the game may have started when someone put their cup of beer on the ping pong table during a match. Whatever the case, it was more sport and less alcohol. "It was not a way to get drunk fast," says one old-timer.

Fewer Rules, Less Beer
Pong consisted of only two cups of beer per side from the 1950s until the 1990s; the last 10 years have seen a vast proliferation in the amount of beer consumed during a game.

Women's (Beer) Lib
Women were playing pong at Dartmouth before coeducation. Fraternity members would bring their dates from nearby women's colleges to their houses, inviting the ladies to join them on table. "Sometimes the women were just as into it," recalls one 70s-era Alpha Chi Alpha alum.