Alleged Sex Ring Tarnishes Brown's Rep

After disclosures this week that as many as 10 Brown University students may have been operating a prositution ring, administrators and students at the Providence campus are saying that unfair media coverage may tarnish the school's image.

Robert Reichley, vice president of university relations, said yesterday that Brown officials were "very angry" at what they considered "undue and unfair and unwarranted emphasis on Brown" by the media and Providence police.

"We certainly have been the butt of a lot of very bad jokes and unwarranted conclusions about the morals of students," said Reichley. "We're talking about peoples' lives and reputations and the reputation of Brown," he said.

Providence police said they arrested two Brown seniors last week on prositution charges. Pictures of eight other former or current Brown women, police said, were among those photos of 46 nude, semi-nude, and clothed women siezed from a Providence home that has become the focus of the investigation.

Reichley said that the media's emphasis on Brown coeds is unwarranted because the Ivy League women constituted a minority of the women involved in the alleged prostitution ring. He also added that that there were only six other Brown students identified in the photos, not eight as police have stated.

Reichley said that the four students whom university officials have contacted have denied participation in the prostitution ring. He said the other two students have not yet been reached.

Providence police, however, said two Brown students--not those charged--have admitted involvement.

Reichley said "the media has jumped to unwarranted conclusions that Brown is the center of the focus of this investigation, when it's becoming clearer by the hour that this is an ever-expanding, ever-widening investigation."

Some students have expressed similar concern that the allegations will taint the school's reputation.

"It's going to be very negative for Brown's image," Brown senior Mark Koide, former president of the school's student government, said yesterday.