Kellogg has had its 15 minutes of front-page shame thanks to the now rumor-clouded scandal of September’s CIM Ball at the Field Museum in Chicago. The time has come to calm down and get to the bottom of this drunken hearsay.

As a top-ranking MBA program, Kellogg definitely has brand credibility to maintain. But at an open bar event with hundreds of 20-somethings in attendance, unsavory behavior from a few should be expected.

There has been no public announcements on the number of “overserved” perpetrators and the hysteria-inducing coverage is based on a single listserv e-mail whose author has declined to comment publicly. The Field Museum has also refused to confirm any details of the evening’s events.

The lack of corroborating evidence and the tendency to get carried away with the entertaining stories that speak to “how the mighty have fallen,” should give reason for skepticism. The image of graduate students abusing a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton is compelling, but any damage is unverified.

Although it’s hard to pass up the headline “Kellogg’s Toasted Flakes,” the Chicago Sun-Times completely blew the story out of proportion by giving it front-page coverage.

Certainly, such a publicized embarrassment cannot be ignored. The onus is on Kellogg to gather and announce the facts and face the consequences. But, until then, there should not be more doomsday proclamations of Kellogg’s permanently tarnished reputation at the hands of sensationalized media coverage.