Playboy ranks Mtl.'s McGill 10th best party school
After ranking Montreal's McGill University as the tenth best party school in North America, the May issue of Playboy will feature nude photos of four students.
University officials, however, stress that McGill is a top ten university in ways that go beyond partying.
"McGill is a university known around the world for a lot of things, mostly for the quality of our students and our professors and the successes of our research and teaching," Jennifer Robinson, associate vice-principal of communications, said Thursday.
Although many other Canadian universities have a major party reputation, McGill is the only one to make Playboy's list.
Adam Conter, president of the McGill Students' Society, doesn't believe that his school parties harder than any other university.
But he doesn't think Playboy's list will tarnish the school's reputation.
"For me university is a time for learning and experimentation - whether doing that with drugs, books, alcohol, sex, you name it. As long as the environment is safe, that's all that matters to my students," Conter told CTV.
Andrew Segal, the managing editor for The McGill Tribune, says that partying is just another component of the university experience.
"We just think it's, you know, just a bunch of 20-somethings having fun. Everyone's adults, everyone can make their own decisions," Segal told CTV.
However, McGill's administration thinks the school has been wrongly labelled.
"If we have a reputation as a party school, it's because the media is giving us one," Robinson said.
Instead, Robinson prefers to dwell on McGill's more academic achievements, like producing more Rhodes Scholars than any other Canadian university.
"We're very proud of our accomplishments. We're very proud of all our people. Some things make us more proud than others," Robinson told CTV.
Playboy says that the list is just fun and not meant to reflect a school's academic qualities.
"We feel that the students at each of the universities on our Top Ten Party Schools list have the opportunity to receive and excellent education while enjoying an active social life," Christopher Napolitano, editorial director, said in a statement.
Political science major Phylis Syd, one of the students featured in the magazine spread, told Le Journal de Montreal that she was excited to pose in Playboy, calling the magazine "a real icon."
"It's an opportunity, an honour for me to be in the magazine," Syd told the newspaper.
The students used fake names in the spread that features two girls sharing a strawberry kiss in the nude.
Playboy decides the ranking by sending volunteer interns to different universities to grade the campus on such criteria as male-to-female ratio, the party scene, and how close it's situated to a big city.
According to Playboy, McGill scored big because of its 3-2 woman-to-man ratio and its alluring influence of the francophone Canadians who are "famously open about sex."
When the magazine announced the ranking in September, Tushare Jinadasa, an event coordinator at the school, said the reputation was a "bit of a misconception."
"There's a lot of partying that goes on, but it's responsible partying. As an events coordinator, it's something we place a lot of emphasis on."
In fact, statistics show McGill has a relatively safer party atmosphere than other Canadian schools. A 2002 survey showed 12 McGill students were sent to hospital for alcohol poisoning, compared with 200 for Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia -- another well-known party school.
The top-10 ranking is an honour that some school officials would rather not add to a growing list of embarrassing incidents.
In February, McGill may have solidified their Playboy position after lewd photos from a campus party were splashed across four pages of Le Journal de Montreal.
Last October, the university cancelled the last two games of the McGill Redmen football season after an 18-year-old team rookie alleged he was sexually assaulted with a broomstick during a hazing ritual at "Rookie Night" in August.
But for Syd, who was one of 50 students who participated in the Montreal hotel photo shoot last fall, the publicity is welcomed.
"I will be a starlet," she joked.
With a report from CTV's Rob Lurie and files from The Canadian Press
