To the Editor,
Recently I had the chance to read through many articles from The Trail and one talking about the ranking of the University stuck out to me. The article “Puget Sound ties for 76 ranking” dated October 4th glared out me as an obvious example of bias as well as lack of good information. While it was enjoyable to read at some points I found two things especially curious about the article.
To begin with, there are some points that could have been made that would have made this article a lot stronger and clearer. While it isn’t clear from the title of the article the “tie” that the University of Puget Sound had for 76th also involved 4 other schools: St. Mary’s College, IN, St. John’s University, MN, Gustavus Adolphus College, MN, and Berea, KY. Even if the point of the article was to compare UPS to Transylvania University, it would have been reasonable to just give the other colleges an honourable mention. The other important fact about colleges left out is that this is US News’s Best Colleges, for Liberal Arts Colleges. While it may be clear to the college students here (well, most) that the University of Puget Sound is on a distinctly different list of colleges, a person unfamiliar with the distinction would think that nationally amoung all colleges, University of Puget Sound places 76th; which would be accredited to a college like Baylor University amoung the national universities.
Secondly, the authors seems to make their main point about how the universities may be similar, “there are notable differences between Transylvania University and University of Puget Sound,” but they don’t make any clear points that distinguish the Universities apart. After talking about some statistical similarities and differences like gender of the student body, and the endowments of the universities, the author continues on to talk about the accomplishments of UPS without even mentioning what Transylvania University has accomplished. If I wished to be convinced that the two Universities are different don’t only tell me about one of them and not the other.
A friend of the University
