Every year, Princeton University releases a list of the top 20 “Party Schools”. The 2009 version came out last week and, for the second consecutive year, LSU didn’t make the cut. It would appear that things around the Baton Rouge campus have become a bit more ho-hum since 2000, when they topped the infamous list.

Many people, most notably school officials, do not relish the idea of their institution making it onto this particular top twenty. But that is not true for everyone who is associated with the university. Take fraternities, for instance. They’ve got to be really struggling. In fact, the dance floor was practically empty at last year’s toga party at the Tappa Kegga Lagga house. The fraternity seems to have made an unfortunate mistake in scheduling the gala. It ended up being in direct conflict with a lecture by Dr. Hans Kyrghan on the subject “The Genesis and Collapse of Third Millenium North Mesopotamian Civilization,” which attracted a standing-room-only crowd.

This fall, the fraternities may have to pare down Greek Week to Greek Hour-and-a-Half due to lack of participants in key events, such as the “Bobbing for Beers” and “The Hurricane Hurl”. They are also contemplating dropping Beer Pong in favor of the latest campus fad, “Lemonade Pong.”

No, it seems that LSU students are shunning the madcap Greek life for other extracurricular activities such as the glee club, the debate team, and the bridge club. It’s also become much more fashionable to be a nerd, as calculus books, pocket protectors, and scientific calculators have been flying off the shelves at the campus bookstore.

But not to worry, it seems that they’re nowhere close to replacing the homecoming football game with a chess tournament.