From the Editor’s Desk: Let’s dispel a couple of myths about your university

Class of 2007, let me be one of the first to welcome all 3,935 of you to Boston University. I’m sure the red shirts at check-in got to you before I did, but I’ll make up for the delay.

I want to congratulate you on being one of the brightest, most-talented classes to ever matriculate at the university, but the school itself will take care of that. You’re their new baby, their newest toy they’ve finished playing with me.

While the administrators talk you up to all their friends over dinner ‘The new class is from all 50 states and 83 foreign countries, unlike those slacker 2004 kids who only represented 67!’ I’ll be being ignored in the corner, waiting until I can move into that ‘real’ world.

But while I’m still here, allow me to let you in on a little secret some of what you read in The Princeton Review’s Best 345 Colleges is not true. I know the 2004 school rankings are out, but all of you picked BU based on the 2003 rankings of our university, so those are the ones on which I’m focusing.

DORMS LIKE PALACES: BU was ranked first for having the best dorms in the country. Do me a favor: if you’re living in Warren Towers (especially in a triple) or in West Campus (especially in a quad), put down this paper, go check out your bathroom, then come back to agree with me. Because, your dorms to put it nicely pale in comparison to the one that is a palace my palatial home, the Student Residences at 10 Buick St.

And with the oppressive Guest Policy still in effect, it’s more ‘dorms like jails’ for many BU students, especially those off-campus residents visiting on-campus friends. No trysting, no conjugal visits, no nothing after visiting hours have ended BU is stricter than most prison wardens. Even though BU dropped to 18th in the nation in the new rankings, it’s still far too high and should definitely be reevaluated.

DIVERSE STUDENT POPULATION: BU ranked 17th in the nation for having a diverse student population, which I’d agree with as long as you’re not counting African American and Latino students. While the class of 2007 includes more than 60 percent of students who identify themselves white, it has only 2.4 percent who consider themselves black. The class of 2004 came in with nearly two-thirds identifying themselves as white, while nearly three percent said they were black. The Asian population 12.3 percent for the 2007 class and 11.9 percent for the 2004 class make up most of the ‘diversity’ the school is credited with, followed by international students with between seven and eight percent and Hispanics around five percent both years.

The statistics are appalling for a school supposedly in the top 20 in the country for diversity, and the numbers appear to be headed in the wrong direction with regard to minority enrollment.

GREAT COLLEGE RADIO STATION: Oddly enough, WTBU, the Boston University radio station, doesn’t make the top 20 on this list. I was the guest host, week after week, on a show my freshman year and my experiences working there leave me wondering how the station couldn’t make the top 20. The campus station often goes unmentioned, but they deserve much praise for running the campus station. While you most likely can’t pick it up on your stereo, you can get it all over the world and on the BU campus by plugging http://www.wtburadio.com into your internet browser.

GAY COMMUNITY ACCEPTED: BU ranks number two in the nation at accepting their gay community (or number 13, still way too high, if you go by the 2004 rankings). This ranking must refer to students accepting students, which is something with which I’d agree. But if it referred to the administration accepting homosexuality, BU would belong right alongside it’s neighboring school, Boston College, a school that’s not accepting of alternative lifestyles, according to the rankings.

Last year alone, the university closed down the Gay-Straight Alliance at its private high school, Boston University Academy, which eventually led to numerous groups and students calling for Chancellor John Silber’s resignation. In previous years, the administration has fended off numerous attempts to change the school’s nondiscrimination clause for admissions to include ‘sexual orientation.’ I’m not saying the school discriminates against alternative lifestyles, but when ‘veteran status’ is included in the clause and ‘sexual orientation’ is left out, something needs to be fixed.

GREAT COLLEGE TOWN: BU: ranks second to number one New York University. Who are they kidding? Boston is synonymous with college town; just look at the exodus during the summer. New York City could survive without college students, but Boston thrives on them. College students are oil in the gears of Beantown and we’re number one, no matter what The Princeton Review thinks.

Additionally, we dropped to number seven in the 2004 rankings, behind NYU (number one again), Tulane University (I’ll accept this they have Mardi Gras), Georgetown University, DePaul University (I don’t know what’s so great about Chicago), the University of Miami, for some unknown reason and American University, which is the same town as Georgetown (Washington, D.C.).

After studying in Washington last semester, let me just say the atmosphere can’t come close to that of Boston, which is, and will always be, the ultimate college town.

GREAT COLLEGE NEWSPAPER: Boston University doesn’t make the cut? There are a couple of reasons (read: big fat excuses), dear reader, one being that the FreeP is not the Boston University newspaper. We’re the independent student newspaper at Boston University, as it clearly states in our masthead. While the BU Bridge (or campus PR fact sheet) will give you the news from the Public Relations Office, we’ll give you the real scoop and the news that you need to know to be an informed student.

The Princeton Review’s rankings, and any college rankings for that matter, are not very accurate, because the reviewers are not based on real, in depth student experiences they’re based on quick survey questions. A real school review can only be based on the full body of experiences each one of you will experience over the next four years.

In spite of its wayward attempts at sizing up the university, the book does get some of the facts correct. Our students often ignore God, choosing to worship the Terrier hockey team and coach Jack Parker. The administration has so much red tape, it requires weapons of mass destruction to navigate through and the students here are pretty happy at least the ones I know.

On our campus, you can buy scalped tickets to see one of the most historic sports franchises in all history, or you can slide around on the ice in Walter Brown Arena playing Broomball, perhaps patrolling the same patch of ice as former BU greats Tony Amonte, Chris Drury, Jim Craig or Mr. United States himself Mike Eruzione.

For your entertainment, you can head to the Photonics Center on Monday nights and watch members of the Student Union write writs and try to expel one another from BU’s undergraduate student government.

And, of course, BU has a club in which you actually get to smoke cigars.

What do you really have to complain about?

Bill Yelenak, a senior in the College of Communication, is editor-in-chief of The Daily Free Press.