Rolling Stone magazine has manged to do something nearly impossible: Bring the country together!

Nationwide, enormous outrage is still being expressed at the magazine’s cover portrayal of Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a teen icon, as well as its pop-star treatment in the cover story.

Tsarnaev went to the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth, and local officials have taken offense at how the institution and its surroundings were described in that story.

Staff and students are upset at the magazine’s portrayal of the university as a “middling school” with “an utter lack of character.”

Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (joh-HAHR’ tsahr-NEYE’-ehv) was a student at UMass-Dartmouth.

Chancellor Divina Grossman tells The Standard-Times …in a statement that the magazine sensationalized the bad and disparaged the good….

The article also says the town of Dartmouth is “a working-class community with virtually nothing to boast of except for a rather sad mall and a striking number of fast-food joints.”…”

Auditi Guha of the SouthCoast Today adds further details:

Selectman John George Jr., who owns a farm and farmstand in North Dartmouth, called the characterization “ridiculous” and in poor taste with “no regard to the good people who live here.”

“They have no idea what they are talking about, and it almost doesn’t deserve comment,” he said.

Grossman said it was obvious the reporter had not spent much time in the region.

“If she had, she would have met our amazing students, many from those same working-class communities she belittles, who are paying their own way through college and receiving an outstanding education that truly transforms their lives.

“She would have met the dozens of students who ran a 55-mile relay to Boston to raise money for the One Fund or those who have contributed 200,000 hours of service to the community or those who are excelling in the arts and sciences,” she said in the statement.

The characterizations made in the article are “disrespectful to the school and it’s disrespecting us,” said Mitchell Garon, a graduate engineering student.

Alumni Association member and a professor at the business school, Kaisa Holloway Cripps, said she is disappointed with the cover and the characterization of the town and the university in the story. She said Tsarnaev is “not a representation of our students” and UMD is “an amazing institution” that has turned out “stellar students.”

“It’s shocking that they would stoop to that level,” she said.