BYU owns this label: still stone-cold sober

PROVO — Hey, everybody at Brigham Young University, it's time to party like it's 1998.

BYU style, that is — no beer, no liquor, no marijuana.

Sprite and study hall, anyone?

For the 10th straight year, BYU is the nation's No. 1 stone-cold sober school, according to the Princeton Review's annual college guide "The Best 366 Colleges," released today.

Don't expect any campus parties to celebrate a solid decade of super-hyped sobriety. First, there are no fraternities or sororities at BYU. And second, the students are gone, replaced this week by their parents, alumni and other post-collegiate members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more than 20,000 of them, who have invaded the campus for the annual Education Week.

BYU has dominated the stone-cold category since 1998, when Bill Clinton was president, BYU-Idaho was still known as Ricks and Harry Potter was just 12 years old and in his second year at Hogwarts.

How does the Princeton Review come to this conclusion, a source of pride for alumni and students, about BYU?

The rankings come from BYU students themselves, said Robert Franek, editorial director of "The Best 366 Colleges." The Princeton Review surveys students at each school every three years. It last approached BYU students in 2005, Franek said, though students can go to www.princetonreview.com anytime and fill out a survey online. Over the past three years, the Princeton folks surveyed 120,000 college and university students.

"This is a testament to students telling us what their experiences are both inside and outside the classroom," Franek said. "This isn't the opinion of the Princeton Review."

The stone-cold sober ranking is based on five questions in the survey. Students rank their own schools on a scale of 1 to 5 for four of the questions:

How widely is beer used at your school?

How widely is hard liquor used at your school?

How widely is marijuana used at your school?

How popular are fraternities/sororities at your school?

The survey says ... "Students are very religious," there is "very little hard liquor" used, "(almost) no one smokes" and there is "very little drug use," according to the two-page section on BYU in "The Best 366 Colleges."

BYU was ranked No. 1 in lowest use of beer and liquor, and second in lowest reported use of marijuana, with the Air Force Academy ranked No. 1.

The findings are no surprise, of course. Each BYU student agrees when he or she applies to the school to abide by its Honor Code, which proscribes the use of alcohol or drugs.

"BYU has been unapologetic that those options don't exist at their campus," Franek said.