Testy Problem: Students Study Too Much U. Of Chicago Administration’s Cry: Get A Life (Outside Library)

When you’re walking in the footsteps of 64 Nobel Prize winners, who needs to party?

That is the question these days at the University of Chicago, world-renowned for its academic rigor but dead last when it comes to social life.

As another bleak and bitter Chicago winter draws near for the scholars in the university’s Gothic quads, U of C administrators find themselves in the unusual position (for educators) of suggesting that the students lighten up.

The administrators aren’t talking toga parties. Rather, they’re suggesting that students occasionally congregate somewhere other than the library.

Many students scoff.

“Social life and party status are often measured in gallons of beer,” freshman Alex Reponen said. “I think U of C students find better things to do.”

Or as Rose Toomey wrote in an independent campus newspaper, the free press: “If the university does not cease its fruitless course, we are in danger of forsaking our excellence.”

With its 3,500 undergraduates and 6,500 grad students, the 104-year-old university is the antithesis of a party school: Students score an average of 1,350 on the Scholastic Assessment Test; this year’s national average was 910. And few parents would shell out $19,875 a year for tuition so Junior can learn to tap a keg.

There’s little chance of that. But the center of campus life is the Regenstein Library - “The Reg.”

No wonder eyebrows were raised when the university issued a pamphlet showing The Reg branded with a circle-and-slash emblem.

The pamphlet offered suggestions for an augmented social life.

The school has opened up a Starbucks coffee house, moved the career counseling office to make room for air-hockey and pool tables, added a night of games to Orientation Week, and offered free pizza to attract crowds to U of C football games.

“We need to bring some energy to campus,” senior Italo Zanzi said. “I think that’s why we lose a lot of people to Harvard, Penn and Northwestern, where students have more fun, it seems.”

Maybe, maybe not. University officials report that applications for admission have risen steadily over the last five years.