B-School Gossip Pages Win Student Support

Business School students evidently enjoy being gossiped about in the pages of their weekly newspaper, as only three percent have asked the Harbus News's gossip columnists to stop writing about them, editors said this week.

After receiving written complaints from students and faculty members, Harbus editors several weeks ago gave B-School students the option of not ever being mentioned in the column, the "Gang of Nine." Anonymous writers--one for each of nine 90-member sections in each class--compile the feature.

But less than three percent of the approximately 1650 B-School students have returned forms requesting that the writers not mention them in the gossip column, said Harbus Publisher Casey Keller.

Even though most students have not objected to being gossiped about in the Harbus, Gang of Nine authors have "watered down" their weekly survey of the graduate school's juicy innuendos because of the criticisms, Keller said.

The Harbus's distribution of the forms to students was partly prompted by a professor's complaint during a B-School faculty meeting, Keller said. He refused to name the faculty member who raised objections to the column's biting content.

"There has always been a certain level of complaints," said Keller, "but [this fall] there was kind of an aggregation."

"Some people are inclined to take everything so seriously that the slightest amount of humor brings hurt to them," said Jeff K. Wyatt, a co-social editor. "Maybe people need a little more bran in their diets."