Drinking Games For Justice

Losing at coffee pong is a lot like losing at its alcoholic counterpart except that instead of pleasantly buzzed and eventually hungover you are nauseatingly buzzed and late for section.

Jordan A. Bar Am ’04, co-director of the Harvard Fair Trade Initiative (HFTI), and other members of HFTI held the innovative coffee-pong competition outside of the Science Center last week. The playful coffee break doubled as an opportunity to raise awareness and to give out small Styrofoam cups of fairly traded brew. Bar Am swept FM in a one-on-one grudge match as he handed out java to passerbys. (FM refused to run a naked lap.)

“I don’t drink much, so I don’t play much beer-pong,” Bar Am says. But while he attributes most of his success to “dumb luck,” he also says that conditions were ripe for a novice’s victory: “A, the cups were smaller, B, there was a cross-wind, and…C, it was cold as shit.”

Harvard will get another chance to take down the king of coffee-pong at a tournament that HFTI is planning for Earth Day. Larger cups, warmer weather and a less active atmosphere may help secure a foothold for a bright-eyed, coffee-chugging challenger.

And according to Mary M. Jirmanus ’05, HFTI co-minister of internal affairs, the road to victory might be easier than it looks. “Jordan wasn’t that good at coffee pong. I kicked his ass,” she says, adding that the event was an attempt to do something “fun and engaging” to attract the attention of the student body.