'Blackout rage gallons': College students now party with BORGs, booze-filled gallon jugs

If you drive down some streets in Newark on a Saturday afternoon while the University of Delaware is in session, you'll likely spot a new trend: students toting gallon jugs sloshing with colorful liquid.

Known as BORGs ― short for "blackout rage gallons" ― the jugs are filled 128 ounces of mixed drinks, usually made with vodka, water and flavored drink mixes. (Sorry "Star Trek" fans, these BORGs have nothing to do with the alien group featured prominently in TV and film series.)

The result is a cheap, easily transportable mega-sized drink whose popularity was born around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic when locked-down students found new ways to let off steam.

Sure, games of beer pong can still be found in Newark basements and backyards along with beer bongs and funnels, but they seem quaint compared with these new large libations. They're meant to be chugged, not sipped, as their name suggest, and there is usually one goal in mind: to get drunk.

They are all the rage not only in Newark, but college campuses across Delaware and the country, no pun intended. BORGs exploded in popularity on social media, especially TikTok where the hashtag #borg has more than 180 million views.

Saturdays are for the BORGs

As UD prepares for Saturday's commencement, the school's binge drinking culture is alive and well, but a little different from generations past.

Bars along Main Street have tightened restrictions over the years, effectively making it near-impossible for underage students to get in the door and drink. Gone are the days when minors were allowed in at night and marked with an "M" on their hand so bartenders knew they were not allowed to drink.

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With fewer students in bars, they have found a cheaper, hassle-free way to drink: more day parties at private, off-campus homes away from the watchful eyes of bouncers, police and university officials.

House parties are nothing new on campus, of course, but the ones these days are fueled by bigger batches of hard liquor than the old days of cups of "Jungle Juice."

One group of UD students interviewed for this article said they pay a total of $10 to make a BORG after adding the costs of the water jug, a third of a handle of vodka with three people chipping in for a 1.75-liter bottle and the flavoring, usually caffeinated liquid water enhancers such as MiO or powdered drink mixes.

"If you go to Grotto Pizza maybe for four hours and meet two girls that don't care about you, you have $100 missing from your bank account. This is an easy $10 and you're gonna be blasted," said Justin Vera, a 21-year-old UD student.

Just like BORGs, these parties have their own catchy nickname: dayger, short for "day rager." And on Saturdays, they are just about everywhere when school is in session.

If "Saturdays are for the boys," as the popular saying goes with the younger set, a new phrase could fit right alongside it on campus these days: "Saturdays are for the BORGs."

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The popularity of the drink is hard to miss on campus, where some bars such as the Deer Park Tavern and Klondike Kate's mimic BORGs with 32-ounce personal pitchers or "mega pints" of mixed drinks.

Just the sight of a gallon jug elicits BORG jokes, such as when Jeff "Jefe" Ebbert recently took a drink of water from his gallon jug he always has on stage for hydration during sets. "Oh, my God, he's BORGing!" one female student announced to a group of friends, laughing.

While the gallon jug drinks took off with the help of social media, gallon containers filled with booze are not new in pop culture. Nearly 15 years ago, an episode of "Always Sunny in Philadelphia" showed characters using grain alcohol in the jugs to get drunk for a Philadelphia Phillies World Series game.

Instead of BORGs, they called the drinks "riot punch."

UD students talk BORGs

In the midst of finals last weekend, students could be spotted Saturday afternoon going from house to house with their hands wrapped around their BORGs, filled with vodka, tequila or rum in all colors of the rainbow.

While some declined to be photographed or speak about the new boozy phenomenon, some were happy to talk about the drinks.

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One 21-year-old UD junior said it wasn't until last year that BORGs became popular on campus in his circles, first through social media. And the reason for the attraction to the drinks for college students is obvious, he said while holding a near-empty BORG named "Kim Jung BORG," which he had been sharing with others at a daytime backyard party.

They are easy to make and the drink is low in calories, unlike some beers or drinks mixed with fruit juices.

To add to the spectacle, partiers name their BORGs with markers, using puns or goofy wordplay. They also scrawl slogans, draw images or write checklists on them.

Vera was dressed in a rapper Travis Scott-branded Houston basketball jersey and used a popular Scott song and its featured artists to name his BORG.

"Maria, I'm Drunk featuring Justin BORGer and Young Chug" was written on his jug, playing with the names Justin Bieber and Young Thug to fit the drinking theme.

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The result is a photo-ready plastic jug, which usually lands on social media, whether it be a TikTok or Scapchat post, or in group messages or chats among students.

Vera said it didn't take long for him to discover BORG culture on campus, something no one did back home before leaving for college.

"Literally, my first two days here people were talking about mixing a gallon of water with vodka," he said in between swigs of his orange-flavored BORG.

For him, it's something he does once every two months or so. "It's an occasional thing," said Vera, a junior.

Nearby, UD juniors Tiana Pritlaff and Ellie Crane had twin grape-flavored BORGs with them as they went to parties, their Saturday ritual, they said. Each jug had the same bucket list of activities written on it: a to-do list for the final Saturday "dayge" before finals ended.

Among them, "kiss a ginger," "selfie with a cop," "pants someone," "worm on Main Street" and "finish the BORG."

Pritlaff, who had a Spider-Man-themed BORG earlier in the semester that read, "With great BORGs comes great responsibility," said the portable drinks are especially handy when traveling on foot. "You don't want to hold a bunch of cans," she said.

Before leaving to complete their checklist, Crane showed a photo of a previous BORG, which mixed both UD's educational and extracurricular activities, naming it "Bo," designed to look like an element on the periodic table.

Sounding the alarm over BORGs

Unless you're a college student or know one, BORGs are likely a trend that you have not heard much about.

Not much has been written in mainstream media about the newest wrinkle in the long tradition of binge drinking in college.

In early March, both the New York Times and CBS News published short articles about the drinks, leading to a few others.

"BORGs made the news this month when the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Town of Amherst issued a joint statement regarding a 'significant number of alcohol intoxication cases' that occurred during the Blarney Blowout, an annual off-campus event,' the Times reported. "The statement noted that 'many students were observed carrying plastic gallon containers, believed to be ‘BORGs,’' and that 'this binge drinking trend has been increasingly depicted on TikTok and seen on college campuses across the country.'"

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A week later, Boston University released a statement on Instagram aimed at students, noting that many online BORG recipes call for up to 17 shots of alcohol. It included five ways to make a "safer" BORG:

• "Use less alcohol than the recipe calls for: measure out one shot per hour you plan on drinking."

• "You could also add no alcohol, nobody will know!"

• "Drink it slowly over a longer period of time. It can take up to 30 minutes to feel the effects of one standard drink (like one shot)."

• "Skip the caffeine that might be in flavorings or energy drinks."

• "Check in with yourself and your friends. Be aware of how you're feeling, take breaks, and don't leave your drink unattended to reduce the risk of drink spiking."

Closer to home, one alarmed local Uber driver took to Reddit two months ago to report what he saw in Newark in a post titled "BORG invasion at UD."

"How in the hell is this kind of thing allowed on campus? Students are just drinking on the street and the cops are doing nothing," wrote Reddit user @delijoe. "This is apparently some kind of TikTok trend that’s been going on for a while, but someone is going to get killed."

While BORGs are legal to have in a home or on private property in Newark, they are illegal on the city streets and sidewalks because they are considered an "open or unsealed container, bottle, can, jar, or other receptacle containing spirits, wine, or beer."

Said Newark police spokesperson Lt. Andrew Rubin: "The law was drafted about 18 years ago or so to cover water bottles emptied and filled with liquor or liquor added to soda bottles and similar situations."

Concern at UD

At UD, the director of the university's Center for Drug and Health Studies, Christine Visher, had not heard of BORGs until contacted for this article.

Visher, a sociology professor, said the large-scale drinks, which encourage overdrinking, raise many concerns ranging from alcohol poisoning to increased possibility of sexual assault and other assaults that come with binge drinking.

UD's day parties with drink sessions that extend for hours into the night combined with the made-for-binge-drinking BORGs could be a nasty recipe.

"The Saturday day parties at Delaware are also sort of an almost unique thing," said Visher, who has done research on UD's day party culture. "Combining that level of alcohol with a full day to drink can be quite dangerous."

Maj. Jason Pires, deputy chief of the University of Delaware police, said there have not been any incidents where BORG use has been directly connected to any alcohol overdoses or similar issues.

He said BORGs first arrived on the radar of police in March ahead of St. Patrick's Day celebrations, around the time of the alerts were sent out by the Massachusetts schools.

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"We educated ourselves and circulated some internal educational documents so everybody in the department was aware of the trend," Pires said.

Visher is not surprised that social media applications such as TikTok have fueled the popularity of BORGs. Combined with strict entrance requirements at bars that "pushed drinking into house parties," she said.

"That's what young people do. They copy trends that are seen on social media and the university needs to get ahead of these things," she said. "What they are trying to do is provide more law enforcement for these parties where a lot of underage campus students hang out, but because they are house parties, they're difficult to enforce."

Pires said while indoor parties are tougher to patrol, large-scale bashes that take over backyards or front porches and violate city ordinances are met with UD and Newark police working in tandem.

"We want to make sure everybody's being safe," he said, adding that police have targeted patrols for parties during certain times of the school year when they are prevalent.

For Visher, educating freshmen about what they are likely to encounter in terms of alcohol once on campus is key.

"They sort of don't realize how pervasive the alcohol culture is on this campus," she said. "The university is working towards providing more background information for students about the dangers and what they might experience when they come on campus in the fall in respect to these day parties and these kinds of alcoholic drinks."

Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and Twitter (@ryancormier).

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: BORGs are the new drinking trend among University of Delaware students