BU lowest-ranked party school in Maclean’s rankings

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This article was published 29/11/2019 (2318 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Not content with giving Brandon University a poor score in its recent post-secondary rankings, Maclean’s magazine found a way to further twist the knife this week.

Depending on one’s perspective, that is.

In a survey of students at universities across Canada, Brandon University was ranked dead last out of 43 for partying. In other words: BU students spend less time partying on average than their peers, spending only two hours a week doing so.

That’s far below the leader, St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S. The party animals there average 10.6 hours of partying per week.

In October, Maclean’s ranked Brandon University 18th among primarily-undergraduate universities in terms of overall quality, tying for last place in the category with Cape Breton University.

Second-ranked Bishop’s University has students who party a bit less, spending 8.8 hours of their week getting wild.

Other Manitoba-based institutions also struggled to show a partying spirit, with the University of Winnipeg coming in at 41st and the University of Manitoba tied for 39th.

According to Maclean’s, the average Canadian university student parties for 4.7 hours each week, spending $12.86 on alcoholic beverages.

Last year, students at BU told Maclean’s they partied more, coming in 38th out of 49, partying for 2.4 hours a week on average. The year before that, BU placed 42nd out of 49.

On campus Thursday, most students contacted by a Brandon Sun reporter on Thursday said they were unsurprised by the low ranking,

Luke Eisler volunteered to help improve the score for next year, while Cole Tokaryk suggested the rankings were inaccurate as they run counter to his personal experience.

“We’re a small community, so there’s probably not a lot of places to party or probably not a lot of bars to party at,” Rejeana Brown said.

“It’s not a huge city and there are not many places to party here,” Sam Jackman of the men’s Bobcats volleyball team said. “Especially in such a closed community with lots of high schools around, lots of middle schools around. Can’t really be having parties with little kids around all the time.”

Grant Hamilton, BU’s director of marketing and communications, was unconcerned by the school’s comparably apathetic attitude toward partying.

“I think compared to some of the schools that are ranked differently on the list, we just have a different student population mix,” he said. “We have more students who live off-campus, students that are maybe driving in from a half-hour outside of town.”

When asked if the closure of SUDS, the campus bar, in 2017 contributed to the drop in rankings, he pointed out that the Forbidden Flavours that replaced the bar and still serves beer and wine.

Another point Hamilton made was that BU has plenty of social activities that might not count as partying, like jazz nights.

The Sun requested to speak with someone at Maclean’s to explain the methodology for the survey on Thursday, but a response was not received by press time.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

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