You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March 2009.
The New York Times’ new columnist is a 29-year-old conservative named Ross Douthat. Ross was a columnist for the Harvard Crimson and a staffer (eventually editor) for the conservative Harvard Salient as an undergrad in the late ’90s and early 2000s, and Campus Progress has dug up some of his more … pungent writing. Here’s a taste, from an April 2001 Crimson column:
“If I really wanted to offend Harvard Asians, I might sit down and write an article in which I was, well, a tad critical of the Asian community. For instance, I might suggest that there was, let’s say, a slight trend toward ethnic self-segregation, or a slight proclivity for the sciences over the humanities among Asian-Americans. And I might, if I were so inclined (not that anyone would be), get downright nasty and suggest that a large chunk of these self-segregated, math-and-science types are self-absorbed, clannish and downright weird.”
Check out the whole rundown here.
As we noted earlier, yesterday’s edition of USA Today reported the results of a study that claimed to show that — the paper’s words — “College Freshmen Study Booze More Than Books.” In this post we take a look at where that study came from.
USA Today described the study as having been conducted by “William DeJong, a professor at Boston University School of Public Health,” and as having been “sponsored” by Outside the Classroom, “a Boston-based company that offers alcohol-prevention programs to colleges.” It said the study had been presented at the annual meeting of NASPA, a student personnel administrators’ association, and quoted NASPA’s executive director, Gwendolyn Jordan Dungy, as expressing “surprise” at the study’s results.
The paper was being less than forthcoming with its readers, however, as the corporate press release from which it took Dungy’s quote demonstrates.
William DeJong is a professor at Boston University, as USA Today reported, but he’s also Director of Program Research and Development for Outside the Classroom (OTC), and it was in that capacity — as an employee of a privately held, for-profit company, that he conducted his “study.”
So where does NASPA come in? Well, OTC has been a sponsor of NASPA since 2001, and NASPA has been touting OTC’s products in press releases since at least 2003. The company is listed as one of NASPA’s six Strategic Partners on the NASPA website — depending on the partnership level OTC has purchased, that status may represent an annual contribution of as much as $100,000 or more.
OTC is paying NASPA to promote its products … and it paid for the chance to present the findings of its study at their conference as well.
The NASPA website lists OTC as one of eight Gold Level Sponsors of its 2009 national conference, with Gold Sponsorship defined as reflecting a donation of $15,000 or more. A partnership benefits chart lists the privileges associated with Gold Sponsorship as including a “brief speaking opportunity at national conference” and an “opportunity to co-present a workshop.”
As it turns out, OTC received far more than just a “brief speaking opportunity” at this year’s conference. It was granted two separate 75-minute workshops: one promoting its Alcohol Prevention Coalition (APC) and another promoting its AlcoholEdu web service. It was given space and time for a four-hour “Meeting of Founding Partners” of the APC, and an OTC employee was one of three panelists on a workshop entitled “Alcohol Prevention Excellence: Successful Strategies from Award-Winning Campuses.” In all, OTC representatives participated in four of NASPA’s ten sessions on campus alcohol issues, and ran at least three of those four. NASPA identified two of OTC’s four sessions as corporate events — as infomercials, in essence.
OTC has an obvious interest in promoting the idea that American college students are drinking to excess — the more the public can be convinced that student drinking is a crisis, the more demand there will be for OTC’s products. And given OTC’s support for NASPA, OTC’s interests in this arena are NASPA’s interests as well.
In the full version of the press release quote that USA Today excerpted, NASPA’s Dungy was quite forthright in linking the study’s findings to a pitch for OTC:
“As student affairs professionals, we view the issue of college drinking as one of the biggest threats to our effectiveness as educators. Our hope is that this new finding will motivate all those within the academy, and even the larger community, to join us as we redouble our efforts to de-emphasize the role of alcohol in college life. Indeed, while comprehensive prevention programming has always been an imperative, it is clearly now more important than ever.“
(Emphasis added.)
There’s nothing illegitimate in Dungy providing this sort of support for a funder, by the way. NASPA is forthright about its relationship with Outside the Classroom, and OTC’s press release — distributed on NASPA letterhead — makes no secret of the ties between the two groups. If journalists (and bloggers) fail to make those connections clear, that’s mostly their failure, not NASPA’s or OTC’s.
As we noted this morning, however, USA Today’s headline (“College Freshmen Study Booze More Than Books”) seriously misrepresented the findings of OTC’s research, and OTC and NASPA do have to take some responsibility for that — their press release was entitled “College Students Spend More Time Drinking Than Studying.” And if OTC’s study was itself flawed, as the evidence suggests it was, NASPA has to take some responsibility for that as well.
More on those two issues in our next post.
The flawed study of college students’ drinking habits that got such an ugly writeup in yesterday’s USA Today was produced in conjunction with NASPA, a professional association of campus student affairs administrators.
The USA Today article described Outside the Classroom, “a Boston-based company that offers alcohol-prevention programs to colleges,” as the study’s sponsor. It said the study’s lead researcher had been “William DeJong, a professor at Boston University School of Public Health.” The study’s findings, it reported, had been presented that day at NASPA’s annual meeting.
The article prominently quoted Gwendolyn Jordan Dungy, NASPA’s executive director, as hoping that the study would prompt others to work with her group “as we redouble our efforts to de-emphasize the role of alcohol in college life.”
Here’s what the article didn’t say: Outside the Classroom is a major donor to NASPA. NASPA grants its donors time to make infomercial-style presentations at its conferences. DeJong is an employee of Outside the Classroom, and his “study” is a glorified press release for the company’s products.
USA Today and NASPA are promoting a for-profit educational services company, and they’re arguably doing it by mischaracterizing student culture. In two upcoming posts we’ll explore the relationship between NASPA and Outside the Classroom, and the ways that their partnership may be compromising the interests of America’s students.
Update: Follow-up posts:
From USA Today: “College Freshmen Study Booze More Than Books.”
Well, no. The study found the opposite — that a majority of first-years who had drunk in the previous two weeks spent more time studying than drinking. It was a narrow majority, but a majority nonetheless.
And though it did find that those students who drank spent more time on average, drinking than studying, it also found that 30% of students didn’t drink at all.
If you factor that 30% into the study’s totals, you find that only a third of students surveyed spent more time drinking than studying, and that the average student surveyed spent an hour and fifteen minutes a week more time with the books than with a beverage.
One other thing. The study found that the average student spent 8.4 hours a week studying. But as the USA Today article notes way down at the bottom of the piece, that result is inconsistent with a National Study of Student Engagement, conducted last spring, that found that students spent an average of 13.2 hours a week prepping for class.
To summarize: The study found that 65% of college students spend more time studying than drinking, and that the average first-year spends seventy-five more minutes a week studying than drinking. The article itself suggests that the study may have underreported students’ study time by as much as five hours a week. And yet there’s that headline again … “College Freshmen Study Booze More Than Books.”
Nice work.
Update: I’ve taken a look at the actual “study.” It was put out by a company that offers online alcohol education programs to colleges, and based on the answers provided by students who participated in the company’s programs. Estimates of time spent studying were amalgamated from several different sources, and estimates of time spent drinking were derived from an odd and unnecessarily complicated formula — in neither case did the study rely on students’ self-reporting. This wasn’t an academic study, it was a marketing device.
Second update: Okay, this is turning into a series. I’ll link to follow-up posts here…
April 10 update: If you’re looking for news on this morning’s New School building occupation, you can find it here.
Dozens of New York City police swarmed into Washington Square Park late last night in response to rumors of a planned midnight protest at NYU’s Bobst library.
An NYU spokesperson said the university had received word that student activists at the New School had been discussing an upcoming Bobst action, and requested the police presence — fifty cops, thirty police cars, and at least one paddy wagon — as a “precaution.”
The cops set up barricades on Washington Square South, but stood down by 2 am when it became clear that no protest was taking place.
NYU student activists Take Back NYU! mounted a 40-hour occupation of the university’s Kimmel Center last month, and New School students sat in at a campus dining hall for 30 hours in December. The New School activists, who call themselves The New School In Exile, have pledged to shut down that campus on April 1 if the university’s widely-reviled president and vice president do not resign before then.
April first is twenty-one days from today. This is shaping up to be a jittery three weeks for NYU and New School administrators.
Evening update: There was an anonymous flyer drop into the atrium of the Bobst library this afternoon. Text: “The time has come to begin our refusal. We cannot allow ourselves to stand idly by while NYU profits by our intelligence, lining other people’s pockets while our future slips away. The crises we face are too great for self-interest-as-usual. This is the beginning of their end, and our beginning. Out of their fall, we will rise. Will you rise with us?”
Morning update: NYU Local has a video from the flyer-droppers.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments