It can’t be true. There is an underlying evil beneath the beautifully bright red letters ingrained in the conscience of every University of Wisconsin student who has ever sought competitive cigarette prices or a wide variety of delightfully incapacitating cough syrups. All that Lysol you huffed last Friday was tainted by a business model that’s profits were made possible not only through your lawful patronage, but through the exploitation of Madison’s most vulnerable as well.

Yes, Walgreens has been marketing beer pong to college students. The century-old heartland institution was caught promoting the most popular campus extracurricular activity with a window display featuring red cups and ping-pong balls.

Luckily, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk and Dean of Students Lori Berquam were on scene to stand up to such corporate malfeasance.

“The display is marketed in a predominantly first-year student area, very few of whom are 21,” Berquam told a Herald reporter. “And the display was obviously indicating something to do with alcohol.”

Something to do with alcohol? Imagine what Berquam would think about some of Walgreens snack promotions, which of course market predominantly to patrons without the right, er, prescription status? Has she ever even heard of Madtown Munchies?

Falk added, “Although Walgreens is a good company, the display seems to send the wrong message.” Kind of the way I feel about our drunk-driving Senate Majority Leader, Russ Decker.

If Berquam and Falk cared to research the game of beer pong, they’d generally find a competition that is mastered not through alcohol consumption but through hand-eye co-ordination, strategy and psychological endurance. The supreme irony, of course, is that good pong players hardly drink any beer at all in the course of a match. The best game you could possibly play — a 10-0 shutout — will leave you celebrating your historic glory with a depressingly non-collegiate blood alcohol content of 0.00.

Of course, social policy is not about rewarding the winners, but taking care of the losers. Even on this front, beer pong delivers a strong record in support of relative sobriety. In standard rules — two on two with two beers in the cups on either side — the maximum any single player could drink is two beers. After this disgraceful performance is over, the losing team’s fun is over — they are forced to find other means of entertainment. Beer pong has evolved to select against inebriation.

Of course, some drink heavily before the game. Some play with girlfriends who refuse to drink their share of the beer. But then again, some play baseball without protective cups. None of these flaws in judgment invalidate either game as a genuine American pastime. In fact, chronologically speaking, beer pong is likely almost as old as baseball was when a player was struck by a pitch and killed.

But that’s not the point, is it Lori? Beer pong is not the standard American hitting, kicking, tackling or punching game. No, it’s a drinking game.

It’s weird — and relatively new. Why does it command the attention of so many at a college party? What kind of simple-minded barbarians would make an activity out of the simple consumption of a beverage?

Well, like most acts of barbarism, beer pong is borne out of stress and limited opportunity.

The stress began in 1984, with the passage of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which effectively criminalized drinking for tens of millions of voters, soldiers, parents and yes, students. Once enacted, the privilege of telling college students that drinking would doom them was extended from Baptist ministers to educated, benevolent bureaucrats like Lori Berquam, as well as to the earnest do-gooders at the New York Times Editorial Board.

The message has been clear ever since. The opportunities of yore will likely never be replaced for the undergraduates of this university. Gone are the Sundays when students in residence halls would congregate in the lounge to watch the Packers and have a beer or two with their house fellows. When I lived in the dorms two years ago, the house fellows instead promoted “root beer” kegs — as if such a crude combination of molasses and carbonated water would be any less likely to cause vomiting than fermented yeast.

Therefore, it is unsurprising that the three-year extension of childhood by lawmakers, enforcement officials and university administrators creates a perverted mixture of adult interests and childish behavior on campus. Students are as determined to drink as they are to have sex — in many cases even more so. However, they cannot do so in a civilized, public manner, or else Lori Berquam will send a letter home to Mommy and Daddy tattling on them for choosing a glass of wine over Guitar Hero in the Chadbourne lobby.

And so the savagery continues, affecting students’ relation to booze long after they turn 21 and receive the University’s official permission to drink. There are indeed many people on this campus who never learn to use alcohol without integrating it with a juvenile competition of drunkenness.

There are alcohol-related issues on which you can offer help, Lori and Kathleen. Drunk driving is out of control in this state, and increased enforcement and stricter penalties would decrease the most obviously negative byproducts of alcohol abuse. Drunk drivers should receive jail time, not leadership positions in our state government.

But drinking games? They are your creation. Wagging your finger at Walgreens will not slay the monster your nanny-state has nurtured for over two decades. The culture is the problem. However, that problem arises not from the misguided values of the private sector, but from the irresponsibility of the public one.

Until you realize your fault, Lori and Kathleen, beer pong will continue to be played, and the Miller High Life guy will continue to be associated with good beer.

Jack Craver ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in history and French.