Arizona State University is fine for a weekend romp, but if students who want more female scenery and action ought to spend their college years at the University of Arizona, says Playboy magazine.
The latest Playboy listing of top party schools puts UofA squarely in the Number Five, behind the universities of Miama, Texas-Austin, San Diego and Florida. While UofA officials may snicker at the honor, they can't be pleased with the 14 out of 20 rating for "brains" at the Tucson school. Those Wildcats think they're sooo smart.
The "scientific" rating was based on picks by staff photographers, students and "campus representatives," the Playboy U site states.
Despite ASU's poor showing at Number 15, Playboy gives accolades to the historical nature of ASU's partying rep. The magazine assures its readers that ASU remains a "den of debauchery" and "still has gorgeous girls and the bars on Mill Avenue."
What a relief. And here we thought Michael Crow had turned the place into a giant study hall. Crow, a bit of an East Coast elitist, has never liked the "party school" image. Check out his quotes from a lengthy Q&A with the Arizona Capitol Times back in January:
You said the students this year were the highest quality ever. ASU has historically been viewed as a school anyone can get into, a sort of party school. Is there truth to that?
That is false. Unfortunately that is a legend that creates a distortion in reality. Sixty-eight percent of the students who graduate from high school in Arizona can't even apply to the university. They don't qualify. They didn't take the right courses in high school, and they didn't graduate in the top 25 percent of their class. Automatic admission into ASU is graduating in the top 25 percent of your class and completion of 16 specified courses with better than a C grade.
The party-school image is a joke. It is worse than a joke. We are so far past that. University of Wisconsin at Madison has had drunken student riots involving thousands of students, but we have never had anything like that. They have had that at Iowa State, they have had that at Michigan State, but we have never had anything like that at all. We don't have the issues and problems that other schools of our size have. As those kinds of things go, we are among the most well behaved, most behaviorally conservative large universities in the country. That is a misnomer that comes from people seeing palm trees in January and guys playing Frisbee with no shirt on in March, and they say "those guys must just be goof offs."
"Most behaviorally conservative" in the country? Now that's a dis!
