College Through the Looking Glass

College is filled with crazy frat parties, loose and wild chicks, dark robe-filled hazing events, and more stereotypes than a Spike Lee Joint. I swear to God, I can't walk down the hallway without bumping into a jock wearing a letterman jacket, then I turn around and see my stoner friend who is always wearing a shirt with a weed leaf on it. After meeting these two gentlemen, I go outside and see hundreds of students sitting in the grass studying and talking philosophy. I sit and chat for a little bit about blah liberal idealologies for a few minutes before I rush off to class. When I get to class, which takes place in a giant auditorium that is only half-filled with students, I have to sit there for fifteen minutes while the professor calls out the name of his arch nemesis-student. When he sees the student isn't in class, he turns and lectures for three hours in the same voice he used in the Visine commercials. Once class is done, I can go to my local unsupervised frat house (Poppa Cappa Cappa) and partake in a crazy kegger. Rounding out my night is some promiscuous sex with three girls I don't even know.

Okay, now that you know what college is SUPPOSED to be (according to Hollywood and the WB), let me compare and contrast.

I began thinking about how college life is portrayed when I watched the movie Van Wilder the other day. Now let me start by saying that I would never normally watch a Godforsaken movie like this, but it was Sunday night and I was too tired to change the channel. The whole was absolutely terrible, but it especially appauled me when I saw how college life is "supposed" to be, says National Lampoon.

There are two types of colleges in Hollywood. The party school and the philosopher's school. Usually movies decidedly pick one stereotype or the other, but from what I know now... neither is correct.

The Party School: The party school is portrayed in such "comedy classics" --I think not-- as Animal House, Road Trip, Old School, Van Wilder, yatta yatta yatta. All of these movies (and more that I just don't feel like mentioning) portray college in the same light. A place where slackers can drink, get stoned, have sex, skip class and still get by. That is, unless their businessman-father doesn't pull them out of school, or if the Dean doesn't kill them. Kids can get away with almost anything, especially when it's in their fraternity house. There are two kinds of Frat houses: the preppy, intelligent athletic house and the partying losers house. The preps always do things the same way: the throw big popular parties with all sorts of fancy alcohol, wear sports coats, have pre-med or business majors, and are assholes. And they all LOVE to haze the freshmen. Hazing always takes place in a dark, candle-lit hallway somewhere on campus. The freshmen are all in their underpants while all of the frat guys are in dark robes. Hazing always includes some sort of disgusting or harmful task that these freshmen would do ANYTHING to accomplish because for some reason they are DYING to get into a fraternity (which, in my opinion, is a huge mistake). Finally, to round out the Party School, there are trials... lots of trials. If you break the rules, or commit some form of major vandilism that would normally get you kicked out of college, don't fret! You can just give a heartfelt speech to the academic board (followed by an applause from your supporters) and you will be off the hook.

The Philosopher School: This college stereotype isn't as prevalent in film as the previously mentioned school. Why? Because not many people would actually want to go to this school. The "Brain School" (as I will refer to it as) is filled with intellectuals, hippies, smart women, and at least one boy trying to find himself. This is the college where everyone hangs out under trees, talking about life, love, and ethics. This is the college that protests the war because it hurts trees. This is where you will see extreme competition among classmates, people backstabbing and stealing to make the perfect grade. Kids have sex with teachers in this college. The smartest kids are always the most popular, and they have the best lookin' gals on campus (who happen to be independant and artistic). More than likely, these colleges have the stupid athletes (unlike the Party School, where they are intelligent) and where there is always a debate club that is actually liked amongst the school. If you were a student here, you would always be struggling but still get all A's. You would have to stay up late at night, trying to write a paper... but suddenly you would get inspiration and stay up all night writing. Then you would run across campus (with everyone yelling at you) just to make it to class just as the professor was about to close the door. Of course you would get a good grade on the paper, but never a 100% because that wouldn't be realistic.

Did I mention the stereotypes that both of these colleges employ? Well, apparently, all Asians are supposed to be smart, but the boys are sometimes stoners. The jocks are usually incredibly dumb. The extremely smart kids, and all medical majors, are pricks. The nerds are on the debate team, and they still can't get any chicks. Girls are very smart and independant, until they get drunk and become crazed sex-fiends. There is a kid on campus who is charge of everything, and controls everything, and is loved by everyone. All of the teachers have personal vendettas with their students, but behind the scenes they all smoke up.

I know that Seton Hill doesn't have any frat houses, or a football team for that matter, but I have been in college enough (and see enough other colleges) to tell you that things are so very different that it makes these college movies into science fiction.

All I need to do is go back and just pick every point I talked about, and tell you its the opposite because in reality it really is! That would take all day, and most of you who read this are already in college with me... you are experiencing what I'm talking about.

When it comes to parties and whatnot, there aren't really any. If you want to party, you have to go off campus to some kid's house and even then it's not like what they show in the movies. There isn't any hazing going on for the freshman at SHU (aside from getting shoved into a triple dorm when they were promised a double). And there certainly aren't kids sitting in Sullivan lawn reading Falkner or Proust. People in college nowadays aren't even well-read, let alone philosophers (there are minor exceptions to every generalization of course). And all of the teachers that I have experienced thus far seem to enjoy everyone in their class... I haven't been forced to wait more than two minutes while they called out a missing classmate's name.

If anything, these college movies really make me angry. They are filling high schoolers with false hopes of a laid-back, beer filled atmosphere where they won't really need to do anything but party to succeed. Now while there are alcohol and drugs in various places around campus, they aren't just sitting around while everyone parties on the front lawn of Havey. And I assure you, if a party did break out in front of Havey, our crack security force would break that thing up in a matter of hours!

After doing this extensive look into the truth about college in movies, I am interested to look at some other things in movies... like being a mugger who gets caught by the FBI. What are the chances of them asking me to help them out on a "special mission"???