An anti-Semitic drinking game caused a stir in Princeton, New Jersey, this week after a picture showing local high school students playing “Jews vs Nazis” beer pong was widely shared on social media.
Princeton High School junior Jamaica Ponder posted a picture to her blog on Wednesday that she said shows her classmates participating in a game where beers cups are arranged as a swastika and Star of David at either end of a table.
Drinking Game Zone, a website containing instructions for nearly 200 alcohol-involved event, said the game — also known as “Holocaust Pong” — involves 60 cups of beer and involves moves with names like “Auschwitz” and “Anne Frank.”
“Well, perhaps it is a joke. But then I guess the punchline would be: genocide. Pardon me if I don’t find that to be hilarious,” the 17-year-old student wrote on her blog. “The real joke here is that these kids weren’t only insensitive enough to play the game, but also silly enough to post it on Snapchat and leave it there long enough for me, and several others, to take a screenshot.”
Not only did the student post the picture on her blog, but before long it was shared more than 1,000 times on Facebook.
“I think an incident like this underscores and highlights a number of different issues,” Joshua Cohen, a regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, told The Forward, a Jewish culture website. “One, the trivialization of Nazis, Hitler and anti-semitism by teenagers. I think it underscores the critical need for holocaust education,” he said.
Its unclear when the image was first shared on Snapchat by partygoers, but Princeton Planet, a local news site, said that “a handful of upset parents” had raised concerns over the game on Wednesday night, and by Thursday educators were forced to respond.
“As an individual and as the superintendent of the Princeton Public Schools, I am deeply upset that some of our students chose to engage in a drinking game with clearly anti-Semitic overtones and to broadcast their behavior over social media,” said Superintendent Steve Cochrane.
“As a community we all have a role in teaching our children to make good decisions, to be legally responsible, and to be respectful members of a diverse society,” he added. “An incident such as this one, forces us to take a hard look at our efforts in educating our children in the values that may be most important to their success in life.”
Ms. Ponder said she told her school guidance counselor about the photograph before she posted it to her blog on Wednesday as a courtesy, but not everyone at Princeton High was happy with her when she arrived for class the next day.
“A couple of people came up to me using profanities, but a lot of people were very kind and I’d say appreciative of what I did,” she told NJ.com. “Someone needed to show what exactly is going on when no one’s paying attention.”
“Putting the picture on social media means that someone was proud enough of the game to want to show it off. Meaning that they must be trapped in the delusional mindset that making a drinking game based off of the Holocaust is cool. Or funny. Or anything besides insane. Because that’s what this is: insanity,” she wrote on her blog.
Planet Princeton said parents and students at have identified several of the individuals photographed playing the game as athletes and peer leaders.
Mr. Cochrane declined to comment with respect to possible disciplinary action when asked by reporters this week and said that district confidentiality policies prevent him from discussing the matter further, the New York Daily News reported.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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