Let U of I party ranking end at polls

By Quad City Times

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The Princeton Review returns with its provocative list of party schools, one of 62 rankings this private business compiled from a survey of 126,000 students nationwide.

This for-profit company ignites headlines each year by releasing the party school results. To learn what these same American college students deemed the most academic, diverse, challenging or any of the other substantive rankings, you'll have to pay.

The Princeton Review is a lucrative holding of TPR Education IP Holdings, LLC., with absolutely no affiliation with the renowned university of the same name. This company sells testing guides and other curricula.

So the validity of these rankings is sketchy at best. The University of Illinois ranked third on the 2013 list, and the University of Iowa climbed from 2nd last year to top this year's poll.

Iowans don't need a polling firm to tell them excessive partying is a problem at the University of Iowa.

Just read our sports pages.

Or visit the pedestrian mall any Wednesday through Saturday night.

The University of Iowa and Iowa City are collaborating to limit the reckless behavior endemic to almost all teenagers testing their fledgling adult freedoms. That collaboration, dubbed the Partnership for Alcohol Safety, released its own survey in July showing a marked decline in U of I students' self-reported drinking. The spring 2013 survey showed 75.4 percent of students reported drinking in the prior 30 days. That's down from 87 percent in a similar, 2009 survey. Self-reported high-risk drinking dropped from 76 percent in 2009 to 59 percent this year.

We'll trust those figures, compiled from actual University of Iowa students, over the Princeton Review's online compilation.

Still, some Iowa City tavern owners have resurrected a campaign to overturn Iowa City's 2010 law preventing anyone younger than 21 in taverns. The city council on Monday discussed asking voters if 19- and 20-year-olds should be allowed to return to taverns, even though they cannot drink.

That public vote will determine how the University of Iowa will be perceived. A vote that invites minors back into taverns would pretty much affirm that alcohol sales trump public safety in Iowa City.

Princeton Review surveys only students. A referendum surveys registered, voting adults.

We're rooting for the grown-ups to make this decision.