This University has been plagued by an identity problem for a long time. Many students, albeit not all, have thought of themselves as attending a party school and acted accordingly. The administration has tried to portray LSU as a school of diversity, change and research. The actual identity – or image – is, as always, somewhere in between. With this backdrop, the University started unveiling their “new national image and recruiting campaign” yesterday and continued today.
I doubt many would agree with opinion editor Ryan Merryman’s labeling of this University as a “Harvard on the Mississippi” unless they felt he was being not just a little sarcastic. Conversely, our rankings as a party school have dropped since the University tightened the reins on drinking in light of alcohol-related deaths in recent years; currently the Princeton Review ranks us 19th on its “Party Schools” list, but is the actual problem one of image or identity?
Sure, our recruiting commercials aired on television during football games appear to have been made by a high school A/V club. Cheesy lasers flash across the screen along with photos of students typing away at computer screens and wearing safety goggles. It wouldn’t hurt if part of our “new national image and recruiting campaign” did away with these in lieu of something that could even hint at professionalism.
Changes to the school logo, initials and mascot have also been apparent in this new campaign. Tradition, that is a certain characteristic manner and something in which the University and its students once prided itself, no longer seems applicable, at least not to these eyes.
We traded in a realistic looking Mike for the cartoon version a few years ago. Now they have futurized how we are supposed to write the letters LSU and have pulled an impressionistic design of the Memorial Tower accompanying it to the point of confusion. However, image is image, and icons are just icons.
LSU is no longer Princeton Review’s darling “Best Party School” – or “Worst,” depending on how you look at it. That’s the University of Wisconsin-Madison. LSU still lags behind the “Best Party School” in the rankings that truly matter – academic excellence.
U.S. News and World Report, which uses measurements like retention rate, graduation rate, acceptance rate, faculty resources, class size and selectivity, ranks the University of Wisconsin-Madison 34th in the nation. That’s in the first tier. This University is in the third tier. Many would argue that rankings are given far too much weight and fail to quantify other valuable resources for prospective students. Rankings are just rankings.
We do need an effective national campaign to attract well-qualified students from a broader national base if that is what the University wants. It does not matter much to me where the students are coming from, though, as long as we are all getting a decent education. We do not need fancy digitized, rotating and spinning graphics to appear cutting-edge or technological.
The real problem for attracting students, which some would argue the University is not actually having a problem doing, is not changing our image but showing it.
The truth is this University is probably better than what the rest of the nation thinks of it, and even better than the panic attack some here are having over our quality.
It has excellent professors in all fields, and they continue to win awards and fellowships. The campus, although frequently marred by construction, is quite beautiful. Our athletic teams win most of the time. There are non-alcoholic things to do around campus if one wants to.
Time constraints prevent me from witnessing the University’s presentation on the matter, so I’ll give them my two cents now: I think a good “new national image and recruiting campaign” will show all that without fluff, hyperbole or lasers.
 
Lake is a history senior. Contact him at [email protected]