Chancellor blasts story

In a letter to the editors of Time magazine, IU-Bloomington Chancellor Sharon Brehm accuses the weekly newsmagazine of exploiting and sensationalizing IU's party image.\nIn its May 12 edition, Time published an article describing IU's party scene, with the headline "When they party, they party hearty."\nThe article supports Princeton Review's August ranking of IU as the nation's No. 1 party school. It also mentions visits from a porn company and "Girls Gone Wild" film crew as part of IU's "growing p.r. problem" caused by excessive partying.\n"The party ranking meant that the administration's exertions were having little effect," the article says. "In fact, a shocking 52 percent of students said in a survey last year that they are binge drinkers."\nThat figure is about the only thing campus officials don't dispute in the article.\nWhen IU Police Department Lt. Jerry Minger heard the University was to be featured in Time, he said he hoped to see some data that would support or contradict IU's party school label.\nHe didn't find it.\n"They went around and asked a bunch of partying, drunk students if this was a party school," Minger said. "I've taken some research classes, and that doesn't seem like a valid sample to me."\nIn her letter to Time, Brehm said the obvious way to find students who drink at any university is to go to nearby bars.\n"Unfortunately, by doing so, you exalt a misleading example of typical student behavior," she said.\nBut Jenifer Joseph, the reporter on the story, said she spoke with other IU officials, including Dean of Students Richard McKaig and Dee Owens, director of the Alcohol and Drug Information Center.\nBut those quotes were cut by her editors.\nJoseph, an Ohio-based freelance writer, also explained why the article ran several months after IU was ranked No. 1 party school. Joseph said she was done with the story, and it was ready to go by last fall, but it was held.\n"I thought the story had long since been dead and buried," Joseph said. "But they resurrected it."\nTime editors did not return phone messages by press time.\nBrehm said Time took the easy way out by not carefully examining the rationale behind the party school ranking.\n"Recent studies show that our strict enforcement of alcohol policies is making a real impact on alcohol use among our students," Brehm wrote in her letter. "It is unfortunate that Time appears to be more interested in exploiting the problem than in reporting on the remedies."\nBut sophomore Will Loy, who was quoted in the article for partying 14 nights in a row, said IU officials are again overreacting to media hype about the University's party-school image. Partying is a priority for college students everywhere, he said.\nLoy said his parents didn't mind seeing him quoted in the article, but his dad was a little worried about what IU might think of it.\nSenior Krissy Selleck, who was also interviewed by Time, was quoted as saying, "We all got fake IDs the second we joined the sorority."\nBut Selleck said she has never owned a fake ID.\n"I was shocked when I saw (the article)," Selleck said. "Our quotes were out of context."\nMcKaig said quotes from drunk students should have been left out altogether.\n"When you take such a slanted interview approach, you don't do the readers or the institution a good service," McKaig said.\nMcKaig, who was interviewed but not quoted in the article, said sources with a different point of view could've been found anywhere on campus.\nBut he said Time was probably more concerned with the party-school point of view. \n"It's juicier to read about exploits of wild life in college than about students working hard in school," McKaig said. "Maybe it's just what the editors think people want to read"