Opening the door to his friend’s car this spring, Tom Hoff knew he’d been duped.
Sitting in the seat was a bottle of the alcoholic beverage Smirnoff Ice, which the junior at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., grabbed and brought inside his friend’s house. He knew what to do.
Before a crowd of people, the New Jersey native dropped to one knee, lifted the cold, grape-flavored drink to his lips, and chugged.
Mr. Hoff had just been “iced.”
The drinking game — known as “icing” — spread on college campuses across the nation this spring. Students discovered rules on a website called BrosIcingBros.com, according to students and The New York Times, which recently reported that sales of Smirnoff Ice have spiked at the University of the South.
Since then, hundreds of icing videos have been posted on YouTube.
The malt beverage has between 4.4 and 5 percent alcohol, depending on the flavor.
Eric Hartman, dean of students at the University of the South, said administrators are aware of the phenomenon on campus. But it’s hard for colleges to keep up with fads of a “viral nature,” he said, since they tend to dissolve and be replaced by other forms of entertainment.
Mr. Hartman said college officials try to “minimize” anything that is “consistent with abusive alcohol consumption.”
“It’s an example of a steady challenge that lots of colleges face, that students have time to create fun opportunities which aren’t always healthy choices,” he said.
In Sewanee, where beer can be sold but not liquor, icings abounded in restaurants, the campus library and on the way to class, according to several students. One recent graduate said she never participated in the game but she saw it played many times.
ABOUT BINGE DRINKING* Binge drinking is defined as consuming four or more drinks in a two-hour period for a woman, or five or more drinks for a man.* About 90 percent of the alcohol consumed by underage drinkers in the United States is in the form of binge drinking.* Binge drinkers are 14 times more likely to report alcohol-impaired driving than those who don’t binge.* Fifty one percent of binge drinkers are aged 18 to 20.Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
“It started off kind of as a frat-guy prank where if you walk up to someone and you have a Smirnoff Ice and you give it to them, they have to drop on one knee and chug it,” said 21-year-old Emily McGranahan. “I think you lose ‘cool-man points’ if you don’t do it.”
Franklin County Sheriff Tim Fuller, whose deputies patrol outside the University of the South’s campus police jurisdiction, said law enforcement is most concerned with underage drinking and observing open-container laws in regard to drinking games such as icing. The legal drinking age in Tennessee is 21.
Dr. Sarah Fischer, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, studies the effects of drinking during the first year of college.
“If you’re playing a game with other people, and part of the game is to drink when something happens, it’s a lot easier to accumulate a lot of drinks in a short period of time,” she said.
A spokeswoman for Smirnoff Ice’s parent company, Diageo, said in an e-mailed statement that the company did not create and does not endorse the game.
“The ‘icing’ phenomenon is counter to Diageo’s values, and violates our marketing code, of which we are very proud,” Zsoka McDonald said in the statement.