A recent New York Times article discussing changes made due to swine flu talked about one college that has asked its students to make a pretty sacrificial change:

Students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., are being asked to refrain from playing beer pong, a communal drinking game, after an outbreak of illness that officials feared might be swine flu.

That’s right, GIVE UP BEER PONG!!! (what, were they encouraging beer pong before? “Good job on your exam, Timmy” “Thanks, Professor Smith!” “Let’s go get shit-faced, Timmy”) So that got me thinking, what changes could we at Penn State make to avoid the swine flu? Hmmmm…

• Discourage students from playing beer pong
• Discourage students from playing flip cup
• Discourage students from playing any drinking games (what a concept)
• Discourage students from camping out in the freezing cold for a week before the football game
• Discourage students from standing bare-chested at the game (you’ll catch your death in this weather!)
• Discourage those girls walking by themselves to parties at 10:30 PM wearing nothing but a jean mini-skirt.
• Discourage the weather from being 32 degrees in October. Seriously! Sarah Palin’s warmer than us in Wasilla
• Get rid of all those squirrels.  They may not have swine flu (or they may) but they’re plotting something, I know it

So there you have it, Noah’s simple rules for avoiding swine flu. Personally, I think the odds of the University adopting any of these measures is as good as pigs flying.

Update 1:51 pm: A couple of commenters have pointed out that way back in May Penn State Live wrote about, to use the University’s positively Orwellian phrase, voluntary social distancing.

[Photo courtesy of flickr.com]