President Michael McPherson rescinded a request that religious students fill out an online survey for the Princeton Review last week after receiving a letter from one such student who was enraged and accused him of trying to skew the results.

McPherson originally made the request after being told by an alumnus that Macalester ranked number one on a list of colleges where “students ignore God on a regular basis.” The Princeton Review, which produces an annual college guide titled The Best 331 Colleges, first released the list in August on its Web site, www.review.com.

In an e-mail to Assistant Dean of Admissions Nancy Mackenzie, McPherson said, “It appears they counterpose this to a list of schools where ‘students pray on a regular basis.’ So I'll bet this is driven by some question on their Web survey about how often you pray. If that's right it would be easy enough to get ten students or something to log in and say they pray a lot or something. This is going to be a pain with religious alumni.”

This e-mail was then forwarded to Chaplain Lucy Forster-Smith, who sent it on Chapel Coordinator Gail Caligiuri. Caligiuri sent the entire strand, including McPherson’s comments (which he later characterized as “flip and insensitive”) to a list of over 100 students connected with the chaplain’s office.

Several students responded. Some were upset; others saw no problem with the request.

Rae Sailor ’05 said he was “very offended that the college is willing to skew the results of a survey by asking a specific demographic group to fill it out. My father is a statistician and my mother is a psych researcher, so manipulating the data is a cardinal sin in my book. Although I’m also of the opinion that the Princeton survey is completely worthless anyway, because its based on voluntary response.”

“I think it is absolutely fine for college students to be asked to take the survey,” said Deanna Feree ’04, another student who received the email. “It stands to reason that anyone would want their school to be represented truthfully, so the more students who participate in the survey, the better. This is probably a better reason for taking the survey than just to change the religion question and make religious alumni happy, but clearly that is also something our school administrators have to think about.”

In his retraction McPherson wrote: “I greatly regret that my hasty and carelessly written e-mail was widely circulated. It strikes me as reckless and irresponsible for an outfit like the Princeton Review to try to grab headlines by ranking schools on something as nebulous and ill-defined as ‘ignoring God,’ and my message shows my annoyance. I really don't know how they establish this ranking, but I am extremely confident that they have no plausible way of defending the claim that we are more ‘godless’ than school number five or number 15 on their list. This is all just nonsense, and I would have been smart to ignore it. I wish I had.”

The Princeton Review does not publish their methodology for evaluating schools on their website, but claims that “each year, The Princeton Review surveys thousands of college students to get the inside word about what's going on at the nation's top 331 colleges … College is much more than pretty pictures and classes taught out on a lawn; we'll peel back the first layer of the onion to show you what's really inside.”

The survey on review.com is open to any student with a valid college e-mail address and consists of four pages of general questions about student life, academics and extracurricular activities. Only one question has anything to do with religion; it asks students to strongly agree, agree, feel neutral about, disagree, or strongly disagree with the statement: “Students [at my school] are strongly religious.”

“I answered the question,” said Laura Burrack ’02, one of the students who received the e-mail, “but I was not going to portray things falsely so I answered ‘disagree.’ I think the wording of the question actually asked makes the Princeton Review look a bit ridiculous for translating this question into ‘ignoring God.’”

McPherson went a step farther and said that “to me it is unconscionable. It’s just garbage and it is reckless and irresponsible to publish something like that.”

McPherson particularly attacked the Princeton Review for not publishing the methodology they use to compile their rankings. In the past the President has criticized the U.S. News and World Report rankings, but, he said, U.S. News at least explains the criteria it uses.

“To paraphrase [English philosopher] Jeremy Bentham,” McPherson said, “If U.S. News is nonsense, then these other outfits are nonsense on stilts. I strongly urge everyone to ignore them.”

As for the effect such rankings will have on religious alumni, Richard Ammons, Vice President for College Advancement, said that he doubts that it will have that much affect: “Our alumni are smart; they are open minded, just like they were when they were students here.”

“Will it upset some alumni? Perhaps,” Ammons said. “Part of the college is its Presbyterian history, and there are those alums who wish that connection was stronger. But who reads the Princeton Review? Students applying for college, so most alumni won’t even see the rankings unless they have college-aged children.”

Forster-Smith, the chaplain, said that this is not the first year Macalester has topped the list of students who ignore God, and that for at least the last two years the college has had that distinction.

She stressed that while most Macalester students do not adhere to a particular organized religion, she feels that the student body is concerned with religious issues and that many Macalester students are interested in spirituality. Forster-Smith added that she was interested in having students discuss what role religion plays at Macalester.

She said that she forwarded McPherson’s request on to the Chapel’s e-mail list so students could see what the Princeton Review said, and to start a discussion about whether its ranking was accurate or not.

“I’ve been to a number of the other colleges on that list,” said Forster-Smith, who has a son just about to graduate high school. “I’ve been to their campuses-for instance, Kenyon. I know several of the chaplains, and I wouldn’t say that they are any more religious than we are.”