Lehigh falls in party school rankings

Lehigh has consistently ranked among the top party schools in the nation. Last year, The Princeton Review ranked the university as the No. 4 party school in the country. This year, Lehigh is No. 9 on Princeton Review’s Top 20 Party Schools of 2018.

According to The Princeton Review’s website, rankings are determined by questions posed to the student bodies at the college. For the party school rankings, the review is “based on students’ answers to survey questions concerning: the use of alcohol and drugs at their school, the number of hours they study each day outside of class time and the popularity of fraternities/sororities at their school.”

Schools that received the designation “Party School” were ones with student answers that “indicated a combination of low personal daily study hours (outside of class), high usages of alcohol and drugs on campus and high popularity on campus for frats/sororities.”

Lehigh currently has 18 fraternities and 12 sororities.

There were also a number of alcohol and drug related incidents on campus in the 2016-17 academic year, including the hospitalization of four Lehigh students for excessive drinking. In an April 5 email, President Simon expressed his concern for the safety and well-being of students and informed the campus of additional police forces over the next weekends.

“We will apply our university policies to enforce the law and stem excessive alcohol consumption,” he wrote.

Tulane University took the No. 1 spot on the “Top Party Schools” list, followed by West Virginia University and Bucknell University. At just over 5,000 undergraduates, Lehigh is among the smallest schools in the Top 10.