<p>i just started a thread on the same topic at the same time as you did – sorry about that! i suspect the flatness is because of the murder over at the medical lab. you see this with colleges that suffer a crime on campus. and this one got unusual amounts of publicity b/c she was missing for days and there was this “love” angle to the coverage.</p>
<p>what’s interesting to watch is that it’s all about timing. schools suffer more when crimes happen during the fall (which is when this one did) rather than the late spring. harvard had a murder in an undergrad dorm last may (or maybe it was june) – a lot scarier for prospective undergrads, but decisions for 2013 had been made and the new cycle hadn’t started.</p>