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OU Students begin filming the new national commercial for OU
OU is shooting a new commercial that officials say will not use a factually inaccurate statistic.
OU’s commercial, which has aired for four years, claims that “OU is ranked in the top 10 for freshman year experience,” but according to the center that conducted the study that ranking does not exist.
The Daily first published a story about the discrepancy on January 16. University College Dean Doug Gaffin said the university had committed to changing the statement, but the commercial continued to run unchanged for 11 months.
The statistic also appears in OU President David L. Boren’s welcome to prospective students on OU’s prospective students Web site.
The statistic is based on a 2002 proposal that OU submitted to the Policy Center on the First Year of College, said Betsy Barefoot, the organization’s co-director and senior scholar.
OU was one of 130 institutions that nominated itself for participation in the project, and OU was named as a semifinalist in Institutions of Excellence in the First College Year, Barefoot said.
Though OU was ranked as a semifinalist in the project, it was not one of the 13 schools selected as finalists for the first year of college experience.
“We do not do rankings,” John N. Gardner, executive director of the organization.
However, OU claims in its current commercial and on its Web site that it is ranked in the top 10 in first year experience based on this study. But, Barefoot said the policy center does not conduct rankings.
“This process relied on self-nomination of institutions and was never designed to be an objective ranking that would evaluate all U.S. colleges and universities and make valid comparative judgment,” Barefoot said in a letter.
Barefoot said to conduct a comprehensive ranking, the policy center would have to evaluate every university nation-wide.
“Similar to someone who enters a national competition for writing, if they were one of ten semifinalists they would claim that they ranked in the top 10 of those that applied. Even though that competition did not include every writer in the country you would still be proud that you were one of the semifinalists,” said Jay Doyle, press secretary and special assistant to OU President David L. Boren. “This is how OU feels about the Policy Center’s study.”
Last week OU students began work on a new commercial that will not feature the supposed ranking, but Doyle said the decision to create a new commercial was not because of factual inconsistencies, rather Boren wanted the new commercial to focus on different topics.
“Our new institutional spot had absolutely nothing to do with the way the fact on the freshman year experience was referenced in the previous spot,” Doyle said in an e-mail. “We decided to redo the spot this year because we believe that showing the same spot for more than two years makes it become stale to viewers.”
Doyle said he and Boren discussed what topics they wanted the new commercial to focus on, and decided to use less numbers and focus on things like OU’s National Merit Scholar program.
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EN 3 years, 6 months ago
“We decided to redo the spot this year because we believe that showing the same spot for more than two years makes it become stale to viewers.”
That's believable.
They fudged the language of the project's results - why can't they just admit that it was a mistake and a wrong assumption?