Arizona State University has a big commencement speaker, and a big PR problem.

Last Wednesday the State Press, ASU’s student newspaper, broke the story that the university would not be giving President Obama an honorary degree when he speaks at their commencement next month, and ASU has been scrambling ever since.

A university spokesperson told the State Press that honorary degrees are bestowed on the basis of a lifetime of achievement, and that “because President Obama’s body of work is yet to come, it’s inappropriate to recognize him at this time.” Since then, however, research has revealed that ASU has given honorary degrees in the past to humorist Erma Bombeck, Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo, and a long list of the university’s major donors.

On Friday ASU president Michael Crow offered a new explanation for the honorary degree decision. In an email to students, he said that the university does not grant honorary degrees “to sitting politicians, a practice based on the very practical realities of operating a public university in our political environment,” but criticism continued to mount.

Crow tried a new tack the next day, announcing that one of the university’s scholarship programs would be renamed the “President Barack Obama Scholars program.” Crow’s statement also declared that the program would be expanded, but as the State Press reported, it “did not say how much the scholarship program will be expanded or when it will begin.”

In an editorial to be published in tomorrow’s paper, the State Press notes that the university’s decision has sparked a round of ASU-bashing in the national media, with students bearing the brunt.

“ASU has been labeled,” it says, “a school where students go to get ‘a master’s degree in lawn-mowing.’ It has been labeled a second-rate university. It has been labeled a racist party school.” All because of a “decision made by a six-person committee.”

A decision, the State Press is too modest to point out, that the nation only learned about because of the intrepid work of the university’s student journalists.