The College Fix

Students and alumni at Creighton University don’t think the Jesuit school should appeal to prospective students who want to lead an organization some day.

The school has yanked its TV ads saying why students should choose Creighton after outrage at the tone of the ads, KETV Omaha reports:

In a series of spots and videos, actors playing a range of students explained why they picked the Jesuit school. One in particular spar[k]ed backlash.

“There was a golfer, and he asked, ‘Why Creighton?’ And he said, ‘Because someday I’ll be your boss,’” said Creighton student Michael Holdsworth.

“That line just seemed very prideful, very arrogant and very out of the place with the Creighton that I’ve come to know,” said Creighton student Jonathan Santiago. …

“It’s so much more than being the boss or achieving career success,” [another student] said.

Holdsworth complained, “we’re supposed to be serving others and building others up, and here it was, well, if you go to Creighton you can order others around.”

The school appears to have also yanked a recruitment video (note the play button) from its BeMore.Creighton.edu and forced visitors to interact with a hovering box, which can’t be closed, over the page.

When the hovering-box elements of the source code are removed, it becomes clear that the supposed video is actually a still frame that links to the graduate-degree page (as does the rest of the text around the former video). The image name, according to the source code: “video-placeholder.jpg.”

The ads were so controversial the student government is stepping in, KETV said:

The Creighton Student Union passed legislation asking for a student marketing oversight committee, which university staff said they will establish. Creighton said in the statement that the new advisory committee will include current students and alumni, calling them “champions” for the university.

Read the full report and watch the TV segment here.

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter