In our continuing coverage of the Class of 2011's alcohol-fueled escapades - (don't worry Antonio; you're in good company), we bring you an entire genre of weirdness: the 2011 facebook party groups.

Across the Ivy League, these remarkably similar groups of self-proclaimed alcoholics are proliferating. They feature a whole lot of back-and-forth about what kinds of parties to throw, what kind of drinks are totally bomb, and how to obtain fake ID's - or, as Penn kids prefer to call them, "counterfeit documents."

Many of these children seem like douchebags; others are just clueless. But watching them interact is utterly fascinating. They are learning, people. And that's what college is all about. Though we do wish they'd take some time out of Drinking 101 and learn to spell.

After the jump: Why the Class of 2011 is the Best Class Yet

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As we may have mentioned, this weekend we journeyed to No'th Cackalack as guests of the illustrious, happily moneyed Duke University. Between Skoal, sweet tea, and other firsts (hotel staff calling us "mister"), we took in the first Duke lacrosse game since The Business.

We tried mightily to prepare for our trip to Duke, but plans were thrown into chaos early: the Drawl-English language cassettes we ordered were lost in the mail, nowhere in Brooklyn would serve us sorghum, and then, the day of the trip, airport security confiscated our brand-new Axe Body Spray. How would we blend in with the natives now?!? We arrived in Durham in a fever, feelin' swell on 105 minutes of sleep, and set off for Duke's Koskinen stadium anyway. Historic game, versus hated Dartmouth, beautiful crisp afternoon: we don't need a map, sir, the sweet strains of ACC tailgating in the air will point the way.

Except. The pre-game tailgate in the stadium's lower parking lot -- the upper one was closed to accomodate the national media, which didn't really show up -- was nearly dead. A few SUVs with beer in the trunk; a coupla lifer Dartmouth fans with great-great-grandchildren swaddled in green. But nothing like the rollicking beerfest we'd imagined. Later, we found out a school VP had emailed the entire campus with a request to wear official Duke apparel proudly, leave signs at home, and generally put the ix-nay on the ape-ray okes-jay. ("We have much to gain as a community with our best effort and even more to lose with our worst") Amazingly, the students played along: not a single violent Dartmouth chant, no burning Mike Nifong in effigy, no nothing to make for the ultimate IvyGate post. It was clear, though, fans had done some research on the enemy for heckling purposes; one Dartmouth player with by the unfortunate name of Tim McVeigh got special attention. But for the most part, Duke lacrosse fans were ridiculously well behaved, especially for a sport where the goal is to crosscheck your opponents' faces in.

The few references to last year's non-season were remarkably mannered: girls wearing Reade Seligmann No. 8 jerseys. A lone parking lot banner supporting the players.  Ubiquitous "innocent" blue rubber bracelets.  T-shirt report: there was, like, one guy with a "Disbar Nifong" [Ed.: we really wanted to buy one, but couldn't find a seller -- little help, Duke readers?], and a couple creepy more were trying to sell a model with a circle-and-line-through "Duke Administration" -- they actually talked us out of buying one.

When the team took the field, it was to the crowd's unqualified roar. Lacrosse games usually get decent attendance, regulars there said, but nothing like this. In the crowd, there was a consensus that nobody was winning Duke's first game back but Duke, in a massacre. And so it was: After a year off the field, the Blue Devils turned an early 1-3 deficit into a 17-11 pimpwalk. They despatched Denver the next day too, 13-9, in the rain.

Where we went to school, most people think that you can have school spirit without sports. Some kids there even take pride in having crappy teams. But as we sat there on the bleachers, mint tobacco firmly implanted in lip, tongue conspicuously not in cheek, we found ourselves actually caring what happened to the kids running around the field with sticks. And it felt great. We're as lazy as ever, but suddenly the 40-minute bus rides uptown to Columbia's Baker Field seemed like they might have been worth it.

It's common knowledge that Dartmouth students drink beer like water. (Exhibit A, exhibit B.) What we didn't know is that they drink water like beer.

Check out this e-mail sent out by Dartmouth community director and fun cop Kristin "What Is Her" Deal, excerpted below:

Hey Everyone!

It has come to my attention through damage and clean-up reports that some of you are playing water pong [emphasis added] in the basement lounges/Choates Common areas. I thought it would be a good idea to answer some of the frequently asked questions about the residence halls and water pong, before any clean-up charges were assessed to you.

*Am I allowed to play water pong in the residence halls?

The answer to this is no. I know that finding a table in one of the fraternity basements is difficult and with it being so cold outside, it is easier to stay in and emulate beer pong by playing water pong in the basements. However, there are reasons that this policy exists (to be discussed as answers to the next questions). ...

*What is the harm? We are not underage drinking?:

I know that this seems like a good balance between the Dartmouth drinking culture and just trying to have fun. However, water pong can be just as dangerous if not more so. When playing beer pong you begin to feel the effects of the alcohol on your body, where as you might not be able to assess the effects of water intoxication the same way. Water intoxication is a reality and can cause damage to your body including death. A woman in California died about two weeks ago from water intox. You can read about her story here:  http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/13/water.intox.ap/index.html ...

Thanks and Good Luck in this time of Midterms!

Kristin

While Deal's concern about water binging is legit (we don't know why we know this, but it's called hyponatremia and it's real), it seems pretty unlikely students will H2O.D. during beer pong practice. Let's all say that together now: beer pong practice. One freshman explained it to us this way:

Kids who are very good at pong here generally are more socially accepted, get more girls, etc. Pong tables are not easy to come by in a frat basement because of the high demand, and the winner will always stay on, so there is a high incentive to win.  Since Dartmouth social life is largely based around playing pong, if you suck your night will just be spent watching people play pong, which is boring and lame.

[K]ids actually want to play real pong, since it is so ingrained in our social life, but because we are freshmen it is hard to land a table (unless you're a hot chick) so they want to play here in our dorm. But, since all freshmen dorms are technically sub-free and one can get in serious trouble for actually possessing alcohol, water pong is the best available substitute.

And that's how we know we're in the presence of masters: even when they're not drinking, they're practicing so as to maximize any future drinking experience. We would expect nothing less from the Abner Doubledays of the sport.

Good sketch comedy is an endangered animal on most campuses, but we hear that Yale's Suite 13 is at the top of the food chain. Their humor is risky to the point of self-harm, their pranks are wicked (apparently they got the YDN to review a fake modern art show), and their performances -- usually in lecture halls -- are famous for the free flow of substances.

A little background, if you care (if not, skip down to the next graf): They started off as a sort of anti-comedy comedy group after at least one of the founding members didn't get into The Fifth Humour. In a 2002 Yale Herald piece, founder David Fabricant '04 described his audition: "I was asked to do a little improv ... so I pulled down my pants, wrote all over my body with a Sharpie, and screamed about how I couldn't get laid. They asked me to stop and, needless to say, didn't give me a callback." But now the group has achieved its own kind of selectivity. As they tell auditioners on their website: "Suite 13 is not Seinfeld, Monty Python, or McSweeney's. Suite 13 is fucked up."

Long story short, the Yale brass must have caught wind (or actually smelled) that a show was in the works, prompting a Suite 13 member to send out this sad announcement:

From: [Redacted]
Date: Dec 12, 2006 7:25 PM
Subject: Suite 13 Show Cancelled (Because of Police Oppression)
To: the.condemned; rumpusdiscusslist

Dear Unlucky Recipient,

I'm very sorry to have to inform you that the Suite 13 Show planned
for tonight (Dec 12), has been canceled.

Due to circumstances completely beyond our control, and of which we
became aware half an hour ago, police were going to be sent to
supervise our show. Since a key part of the Suite 13 experience is our
and the audience's blatant disregard for the law, we've decided,
reluctantly, to cancel this show rather than betray everything we
stand for by holding a dry show.

I'm sorry for the late notice, and especially sorry to anyone who
went to Street Hall before getting this email. I just learned about
this travesty myself, and I wrote you as soon as I could.

We're looking into rescheduling to a time and place which will be
police-free, but the the show probably won't happen till next
semester. We'll let you know.

Thanks, sorry, and fuck the police.

--George

This is a crime beyond all reason. We actually had the privilege of catching a Suite 13 show in the fall of 2003 in august Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall; we're not sure if it's possible to hotbox a lecture hall with 30-foot ceilings, but the audience gave it the ol' Eli try.

The show was a solid A performance even before the final, jaw-dropping sketch: "3rd Grade Geography Class," where cast members playing schoolchildren had to take shots of Jack Daniels every time they missed a question. Except every time, the teacher would offer to go one-for-one, until by the end he had consumed maybe a dozen shots, plus shotgunning two beers in a finale that had the lecture hall on its feet. MADD, you may address complaints here; just know that it was Awe. Some.

From the Crap, Totally Forgot to Cover This Last Week, Thanksgiving and All, You Understand Dept.:

During our several visits to Toad's, the unavoidable New Haven nightspot, something about the place struck us as, well, trashy. So we were more than a little shocked by a piece in the Times last week that portrayed the place as some kind of legendary, classy bar, as opposed to the wretched, rail-soaked Rohynpnol assembly line we grudgingly like. Cognitive dissonance like this, we've never known (excerpts alternate with lines written by Yale readers):

[Toad's] was already nationally known, thanks to the Rolling Stones, who opened their Steel Wheels tour with a surprise show there in 1989 ...

Wait, Toad's? Where owners are paying a $90,000 fine for serving minors?

A year later, Bob Dylan played his longest show (four hours) there, on the same stage where Billy Joel recorded ''Los Angelenos'' for his record, ''Songs in the Attic,'' in 1980 ...

Wait, Toad's? Where "Wednesday Penny Night" leads to Thursday Morning Yale-New Haven [Hospital] on a near-weekly basis?

Even the hallway to the basement bathrooms reads like a rock 'n' roll encyclopedia -- Blondie, R.E.M., Marilyn Manson, 311, Public Enemy and Bonnie Raitt are just a few of the names mounted behind plexiglass ...

No seriously, Toad's? Where the Q-Pac Fuck Truck drops off bare-assed girls shivering for rum and the men's ice hockey team?

... past appearances there by Johnny Cash and U2 had impressed him ... 

At Toad's Toad's? Which generously sponsors DKE's annual Bacchalian underage outdoor Sunday morning drinking competition, the Tang Cup?

Trust us, we could go on. (See full story after the jump.)

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Spotted at Saturday's Yale-Princeton game in New Haven: Barbara Bush '04, in top form. A stalker tipster writes in with exclusive pics:

Babs, recently back from lounging on the beaches of South Africa, er, I mean, kissing HIV orphans, strolling around the student tailgate in a tunic dress, tights, knee-high boots (dark sunglasses, natch) with on-again boyfriend Jay Blount (Yale '05), chain-smoking at the SigEp tailgate with a red cup in her back pocket and a drink always in her hand, surrounded by drooling Republicans and Thetas.

Maybe we're just not familiar with "tunic dresses," but take a closer look at that back pocket technique. Extraordinary! That's true Bush-caliber commitment to drinking.

"What I saw was pure debauchery," the Fox News producer said. "Girls were falling down drunk, and most were wearing just panties and bras. I went to the bathroom and heard guys having sex in the stall next to me. A record amount of people had to have emergency medical care." Good God, what was he talking about?

Sex.

Power.

God.

The libidinous event of the Ivy season. Brown's cocky scoff to Sodom and Gomorrah. SexPowerGod: Aren't you turned on just thinking about it? Can you wait for the Brown Queer Alliance's official promotional photos to be released? Wait, we found one!:

Hey, anyone seen our sex drive? It was here a minute ago...

For reasons unclear, this frightened boy is one of BQA's ambassadors of sexy to the student body. Three more room-temperature shots are after the jump. (Note that one of them is titled "Hot.")

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Okay, so this scene from Dartmouth's Chi Heorot frat basement is just impressive.

A Dartmouth correspondent explains:

What he's doing is a "Quick Six." I don't know how widespread that particular drinking challenge is beyond Dartmouth, but this guy must have been in the top three or four kids in our class; I've never seen faster. (I rocked out at 26 seconds at my peak, and I have a friend who clocks in at about 14-16.)

Two anonymous Dartmouth alums write in this week with a brilliant guide to the Hanover Greek scene. Don't go to Dartmouth? Read anyway, out of respect to the men and women whom history alleges invented beer pong. Yesterday: Fraternities.

Sororities

• Kappa: Dartmouth Kappas, for the most part, fit the national rep: popular, obviously pretty (a fine distinction between genuinely pretty), and dominantly blonde. Trademarks include: runny nostrils, visible ribs, and overblown sense of self-worth (one Kappa was quoted in the Dartmouth last year saying, "I'm so glad I'm a Kappa, because it's like being permanently in style.")  Nevertheless, Kappas are the social queens of campus. A contingent of NYC private school types usually fronts each class; that these girls are the more bearable of the lot says bundles about the relative merit of everyone else. Fun fact: Despite its hot-girl, "We eat carrots and date Heorots!" status, Kappa actually has the largest underground lesbian community of the sororities.  The women's soccer and hockey teams both have locks on the rush process, and so the girl-on-girl action quietly filters through year after year.  Makes for a dynamic bus ride come formal time.
• Tri Delt: Tri harder.  Every once in a while, a decent, socially adjusted girl slips through the ranks and ends up having to suffer the indignity of being associated with a bunch of cookie-cutters (literally and figuratively). But for the most part, Tri Delt is a personality graveyard. Most recently, Tri Delt was the subject of a campus-wide scandal after pledges were forced to perform faux stripteases on a bunch of Theta Delts. "At Tridelt we wear pearls/ribbons/Reeboks...we sometimes 'do lunch.' We're seriously awesome," notes a recent recruitment letter without a shred of irony. The walking embodiment of Jane Magazine, if it suffered from Down Syndrome.
• KDE: Party girls without any of the trendy Kappa coke cachet. KDEs equate female empowerment with trying to drink and cavort like a bunch of frat boys, despite the fact that no one takes them seriously. Sisters here have mastered the fine art of talking shit behind one another's backs while pretending everything's all peachy face-to-face. (At least the animosity is out in the open in Kappa.) Perhaps the most irritating sorority, if for no other reason than you can't attend a party without seeing a bunch of KDEs trying to suck the remaining foam out of a tapped keg like thristy dogs lapping at a dripping faucet.
• Sigma Delt: Deferred KDEs. Lots and lots of lesbians dressed up as "rowers" and "rugby players" and "swimmers." Have an activist, feminista vibe going on, which, when combined with the drunk girl-on-girl vibe, makes for a lively house right in the middle of Hanover Town proper.  The fun comes during rush, when innocent non-lesbian females are recruited in droves. Somehow, despite the overabundance of short hair and the palpable exuberance of having a new crop of girls in the room, no underclassman ever seems to pick up on the joke, unless she is already on Team Lesbian, in which case she's going to join the house anyway.  Not that any recruit ever has a problem with it, but the "Holy shit, I thought they were just good FRIENDS" bit is truly entertaining.
• Alpha Xi: Discarded Tri Delts.  Fun fact: they live in the former Beta fraternity house, which stopped being the Beta House when closed-circuit cameras (affectionately known as Beta-vision) used for broadcasting sexual exploits were discovered. This has absolutely nothing to do with Alpha Xi, but bears mentioning.
• Theta: A total mystery. Out on the scene as often as Pynchon and Salinger. Rumored to be kinda weird and slutty, though, which isn't an altogether bad reputation.
• Alpha Phi: Brand spankin' new, which means if you end up a sister here, you'd have been better off not rushing in the first place.

Two anonymous Dartmouth alums write in this week with a brilliant guide to the Hanover Greek scene. Don't go to Dartmouth? Read anyway, out of respect to the men and women whom history alleges invented beer pong.

On a campus where there's not much else to do than drink, where one spends the majority of his/her time drinking is, understandably, a matter of utmost importance. Hence, the frenzy surrounding fall rush -- that magical time of year when the powers that be (juniors and seniors) spend three days deliberating over which obsequious sophomore guys and girls they will deign (or beg, depending on the social cachet of the house) to let join their respective fraternity or sorority.

Despite frequent attempts by school administrators to curtail the "vibrancy" of the Greek system, about half of all guys, and an even higher percentage of girls, join one of Dartmouth's 15 frats and nine sororities. In the interest of time (and relevance -- some of the houses technically considered "fraternities" by the college are actually minority "affinity houses," and are thus, for the most part, totally marginalized by the rest of the overwhelmingly white Greek system), here's an abridged, house-by-house guide to frat life at Dartmouth:

Fraternities

• Alpha Chi (Athletic affiliation: none): A solid enough bunch of guys who throw the occasional well-attended pig roast but mostly keep to themselves. Not a major party destination, but not a bad place to have a beer, either.
• Alpha Delta (Athletic affiliation: Rugby, soccer, squash): An absolutly filthy sty of a place, as one might expect from the frat that inspired Animal House. Pissing and projectile vomiting are standard practice in the basement (even during crowded parties), which literally doubles as an open sewer. An ecletic bunch, the house has shifted in character in recent years from rugby meatheads to scrawny hipsters who think they're cooler than they actually are, which is why Heorots and Theta Delts (see below) consistently get hotter women.
• Bones Gate (Athletic affiliation: none): A vaguely secretive house that always seems to be at odds with the administration, which is why they're usually on probation. A bit more "alternative" (read: more experimental drug use) than the mainstream houses, Bones Gate is perhaps best known for serving "Cutters" during major party weekends, a drink of dubious origin but of definitive effect (euphoric inebriation).
• Chi Gam (Athletic affiliation: Baseball, tennis, date rapists): Historically, the sleaziest house on campus. Has tried to clean up its roofies-laden reputation of late, but that hasn't stopped the brotherhood from throwing parties specifically tailored to freshman girls. A disproportionate percentage of the house hails from Long Island and New Jersey, essentially rendering Chi Gam the Meatpacking District of frat row.
• Gamma Delt (Athletic affiliation: football): Big steaky meatheads, and the sort of girls who are attracted to a bunch of guys who haven't been competitive in the Ivy League in almost a decade.
• Heorot (Athletic affiliation: hockey, skiing, crew): Fun fact #1: Heorot derives its name from a mead hall described in Old English epic Beowulf. Fun fact #2: No one in Heorot is smart enough to have ever read Beowulf. Boasting the highest percentage of athletes of any of the houses, Heorot is where intelligent discourse goes to die. It's also where most attractive freshman girls and sorority sluts go to get rummaged by large hockey defensemen from Saskatchewan. Heorot parties are perhaps best known for turning into Top 40-fueled raves at 3 a.m., which is awesome or awful, depending on whether you are one of the aforementioned females.
• Psi U (Athletic affiliation: sailing, squash, gay bashing); SAE (Athletic affiliation: none): Two seperate houses joined by one common bond: extrodinary douchebaggery. Psi U and SAE embody every abhorrent stereotype you can conjure up about an Ivy League fraternity: elitist, WASPY, rich and preppy. (UPDATE 11:53 a.m.: A Psi U alum informs us they've recently had openly gay members.)
• Sig Ep (Athletic affiliation: none): The house for those that don't want to be in a real house. Big, gay-friendly, and an all-around bunch of nice guys. Not exactly bedding the hottest girls on campus, but they're not trying to bang your girlfriend, either.
• Sigma Nu (Athletic affiliation: Dungeons and Dragons aficionados): The nerdiest house on campus, bar none. No one really knows anything about the house 'cuz no one actually goes there.
• Theta Delt (Athletic affiliation: Lacrossse, basketball, football): Conservative jocks/ex-jocks and the girls who love them (Stepford Wife hot, emotionally and intellectually vacant). Dude, bump that Van Morrison and O.A.R. a little louder, dude? For shizzle. Robert Frost was a brother, and he didn't graduate. Go figure.
• Tri Kap (Athletic affiliation: none): The only legitamately diverse house on campus (lots of Asians, increasing number of blacks). Double Asian stereotype alert: hypercompetitive about beer pong.
• Phi Delt (Athletic affiliation: none): "You don't like us...We don't care," proclaimed an old Phi Delt shirt. Amen. Phi Delt returned to campus in '03 after being derecognized for attempting to burn down Chi Gam. The vast majority of campus wishes sleeping dogs had stayed down. The cultish, socially inept brothers of Phi Delt strive to embody the "Good Old Boy" Dartmouth mentality -- that is to say, loud, obnoxious and entirely loathsome. Phi Delts do have a loyal coterie of groupies from the dregs of near-by sororities, though you'd be hard-pressed to find an attractive (even for Dartmouth) one in the bunch. Memo to anyone forced to suffer the terrible fate of attending a Phi Delt party: they piss in their punch.

Tomorrow: Sororities.