More than 30 Boston University students sipped Rhett-tinis, Scarlet Cosmopolitans and Sherborn Street Screwdrivers – all non-alcoholic “mocktails” – as part of an alcohol awareness event held by the American College Health Association Wednesday night in Shelton Hall’s Music Room.
Beth Grampetro, Office of Residence Life health and wellness educator, coordinated the event in conjunction with BU’s Office of Judicial Affairs to inform students about the dangers of drinking and how to drink wisely as part of National Collegiate Alcohol Week.
“We want to let students know that if they choose to drink, drinking to excess is not the only option that they have,” she said.
An estimated 1,400 deaths a year are caused by alcohol – a large percentage of which occur on college campuses nationally, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Students’ lack of information and awareness about alcohol is largely responsible for the elevated death toll, the organization’s website says.
National Collegiate Alcohol Week started several years ago as a joint effort by a coalition of student affairs groups, including the American College Health Association and the American College Personnel Association. The week is meant to encourage colleges and universities to hold educational programming on the effects of alcohol, Grampetro said.
“I understand that [drinking alcohol] is something a lot of students choose to do,” she said, “and I want them to be aware that if they make that choice, there are ways to do it safely.”
Grampetro said one of these risky activities is the drinking game, beer pong, also called Beirut.
Though rules vary, official beer pong rules state that two teams face each other and attempt to throw a ping-pong ball across the table and into a plastic cup containing either beer or water. If the ball misses the cup, the participant must drink a beer. If they make the shot, the other team must drink a beer. This continues until one team sinks the ball in all the other team’s cups.
“People think this is a really fun game,” Grampetro said. “But they don’t realize that in a game of beer pong, you can take in three beers in 20 minutes.”
To illustrate the effects of drinking and beer pong, Grampetro had attendees put on “beer-goggles,” an item provided by the Boston University Police Department, and asked them to take shots in a mock beer pong game.
“I have noticed that beer pong is prevalent on campus,” College of Engineering freshman Kate Schwendinger-Roy said.
Ping-pong balls, which are frequently used to play the game, are sold at on-campus Campus Convenience stores.
Grampetro mixed together “mocktails” from fruit juices and soft drinks to imitate popular alcoholic cocktails for the crowd to sample.
“It was pretty disgusting,” ENG freshman Angelo Manjarrez said. “It tasked like syrup, [but] still, I’d choose mocktail over cocktail.”