Room Hopping returns this week with a special look inside the seedy underbelly of a Carman Beer Pong Mecca. Eliza Shapiro reports, with photojournalist Liz Naiden in tow.

Bwog sucks at beer pong. We came to Columbia hoping against hope that we would not have to be subjected to fruitless hours of waiting for our respective rounds, only to eventually disappoint our teammates and be mocked by our friends. Oh, what fools we were.

“Beer pong is very central to college life,” explains Anonymous Carman Miscreant Number One, leaning against the makeshift table he and his roommate have made the centerpiece of their double. The beer pong table making process was “easy,” and the ingredients simple: a penchant for the game, disdain for closet doors, screwdriver, two desk chairs, and a spare five minutes. Miscreant Number One simply unscrewed his door from his closet, balanced it over the two rocking desk chairs provided to him and his roommate, and the job was done. Serendipitously, Carman closet doors measure roughly 7.5 X 1.5, almost the same as the 8 X 2 table that the World Series of Beer Pong has decreed official regulation size.

The young juvenile delinquents have hosted three highly successful beer pong tournaments in recent weeks. Anonymous Carman Miscreant Number One commented that his skills have “noticeably improved” though freely admits that he is one of the unlucky ones whose adeptness at pong decreases the more he drinks.

Number One jovially tells of one recent instance during a tournament when he found himself shirtless, with the words “Beer Pong” scrawled across his neck. The RA roaming the halls knocked on the boys’ door and asked “if there was anything going on.” Half-naked, with his collarbone bearing an explanation of exactly what was going on, Number One simply replied “No,” and the RA continued on his rounds.

Exhausted by our own admiration, Bwog left our favorite pong-ers shuffling their desk chairs back into their intended positions for the workweek and placing the table in the corner, muttering about the beer-sticky linoleum floor.