Mass Communication: Living in a Media World, 6th edition
Ralph Hanson
Lecture Builders
Chapter 12
Lecture Builders
Party School Publicity
It’s the sort of publicity any university could do without. The headline in USA Today proclaims,
“Penn State is life of the party.” A parental advice column in a New Jersey paper suggests that Mom and
Dad have a talk with their student about beer bongs and Jell-O shots before heading off to Penn State
University. The reason for this press? Penn State had the “honor” of being named the “Number One
Party School” in the nation in the 2009 edition of the Princeton Review’s college guidebook, The Best
361 Colleges.
1
The honor, based on a casual survey of the schools rated by that company, is one of a
number of silly ratings done to generate publicity for the guidebook. The book also ranks schools
on such qualities as “Stone Cold Sober Schools,” “Most Beautiful Campus,” “Where Students
Study Least,” “Top Jocks Schools,” “Lots of Beer,” “Reefer Madness,” and “Birkenstock-Wearing,
Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians.”
But none of these categories generate the amount of publicity that the party-school
ranking does. The ranking puts the honored school in a no–win position. “There’s no way not to
come off being defensive when you get that ranking,” a spokesperson for Florida State University
(1997’s winner) told USA Today.
What is the Princeton Review? According to its corporate website, the company’s main
business is to sell test preparation services to help students get ready for college admissions tests
such as the ACT, SAT, or GRE. The Review operates a website that helps students prepare to apply
to colleges and universities, and it also publishes and sells a wide range of books on getting into
college.
In short, the Princeton Review is in the business of coaching students on preparing to
go to college.
A key PR issue for the company is attracting attention to its annual college guidebook, The
Best 361 Colleges. Ideally, the Review would like the guide to be featured in all of the nation’s
leading newspapers. But merely publishing a college guide is unlikely to generate that kind of
attention. So, starting in 1992, the Review began surveying students on lifestyle issues, including
the notorious party-school ranking. The results have grown to 63 separate rankings, each of which
1
Carrie Stetler, “Princeton Review Lists Top Party Schools: Kegger–Proof Your Teen?” July 27, 2009,
www.nj.com/parenting/carrie_stetler/index.ssf/2009/07/princeton_review_lists_top_par.html; Jillian Berman,
“Princeton Review Rankings: Penn State Is Life of the Party,” USA Today, July 28, 2009; Sara Lipka, “And This
Year’s Top ‘Party School’ Is . . .” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 1, 2006; Mary Beth Marklein,
“WVU ‘Top Party School’ Campus Acquires Dreaded Rating from College Guide,” USA Today, August 20,
1997; The Princeton Review, “Who We Are,” princetonreview.com/footer/companyinfo_overview.asp; Jay Rey,
“Princeton Review Dishes It Out Again to Bona in Culinary Survey,” Buffalo News, August 22, 2006; Andrew
Guy Jr., “So, How Do You Get to Be the No. 1 Party School?” Houston Chronicle, August 23, 2006.
Mass Communication: Living in a Media World, 6th edition
Ralph Hanson
Lecture Builders
can be counted on to draw, at the very least, local attention from the media in the towns housing
the ranked schools.
Schools honored with a place on the party-school list generally fight back hard with a PR
effort of their own, all the while pointing out that the ranking is meaningless. A Houston Chronicle
article that appeared in 2006, when the University of Texas landed in the hated number-one spot
on the list, outlines the typical party-school story:
Nervous parents shipping their freshmen off to classes next week may wonder if the
rankings have any merit. Princeton Review apparently surveyed more than 115,000 students at
schools across the country, randomly asking students about their party habits. No word on how
many students at UT were surveyed or whether the survey’s authors randomly selected them or
targeted specific groups.
Except that the Princeton Review does not randomly survey anyone. It simply has about
300 students at each school complete the lifestyle survey. The purpose of the rankings is, after
all, to generate stories about the company, not to establish which schools are (or are not) good
for partying.
The one school that doesn’t have to worry about its reputation being damaged by the
annual party-school list is Brigham Young University in Utah. It has topped the “Stone Cold
Sober” list for the past twelve years in a row.
SPIN NOTES: Spin control is the attempt to influence how the public will perceive a particular story; how
it will be portrayed in the press. Spin doctors push the idea that there are always two points of view.
Reporters, since the era of the penny press (See Chapter 6), tend to hold “balance” as a core value. This
means that to do a good job of being fair, they will present both sides of an issue. The goal of the spin
doctor is to make sure his or her side of the argument gets heard. How does spin differ from traditional
PR? The primary difference is that it depends much more on interpersonal relationships, working
