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Reed College in Portland, Oregon, won’t have its federal funding pulled anytime soon, after the school’s normally raucous end of the year party went off last month without a hitch. Administrators at Reed were warned in April that the liberal arts school, which has a reputation for drug use among students, could get lose its federal funding (NIH and NSF research grants, student financial aid, etc.) if revelers at the annual pre-graduation bash, called Renn Fayre, got out of hand. That didn’t happen.
“There were no arrests, there were no incidents at Renn Fayre,” Kevin Myers, Reed College spokesperson told me when I called to check up on the situation, which I wrote about on www.the-scientist.com.

In reporting that story, I spoke with several federally funded life science researchers at Reed who expressed varying degrees of concern over the possibility of the college losing its federal funding if Renn Fayre got too crazy. Myers said that with Portland Police stationed on campus for the weekend-long event, the student body kept it mellow and Reed’s campus security force maintained order.

“We were happy to have the police there if for no other reason than for them to see that we do take this seriously,” Myers said. “Clearly we are making a very strong attempt” to address drug and alcohol problems on campus, an effort that was “verified by the Portland Police,” he added.

“If [faculty members] have concerns, they should take comfort in that.”

-Bob Grant, Associate Editor, The Scientist