It’s that time of year again. The premiere episode for another season of BET’s “College Hill,” a show that got its’ start and gained its personality from its inaugural season on our campus more than three years ago.
Similar to the predictable formula of MTV’s “Real World,” the season filmed here at Southern looked amateur, gritty and like a true experimentation in network television’s venture in trying something new. With the seasons that followed, the show’s production quality improved and its’ cast of outlandish characters seemed to get themselves in even more drama filled situations than the previous casts. But with every season that premiered, parents and civil rights activist groups have professed their hate for the show because they feel it paints the students of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in a poor light, which may explain why producers of the show have had a difficult time scouting locations for the self proclaimed “honest look into black college life.”
This got us to thinking, does “College Hill” help or hurt our image as students of HBCUs in America today?
Within minutes of engaging in this discussion, we are sure groups could come up with a list of pros and cons for show, but for us, one main point needs to be brought into the light for everyone to see. With all its’ over-edited drama and extreme characters, “College Hill” shines a spotlight on something that needs to be exposed-and that’s the behavior and thinking patterns for many of today’s black youth.
So often parents are quick to say, “My child would never do ‘this’ or ‘that’,” but a reality we feel parents need to understand is, anyone in the world is capable of anything. And yes, no matter how civilized you think you may have raised your child, going away to college affords them something far more dangerous than a handgun or drugs, and that’s freedom!
Freedom is a dangerous thing. And without the protective veils of Mama and Daddy, we as college students can become intoxicated by the poison that having personal freedoms can infect us with.
Parental units and university administrators need to stop looking at the show as a crutch to the image of HBCU students, and see it as the learning tool it can be. The antics and situations the casts of the shows have gotten themselves into are surreally parallel to our own lives. We feel if parents watch it and study the behavior of the show’s cast maybe it can open more productive dialect between parent and child about the issues we have to face today. Grown-ups always complain about how they don’t understand us, well maybe you all should take the time to look into the lives of some people who aren’t very different from us.
Granted, we are well aware that the individuals “College Hill” producers choose for the show are often over-the-top exaggerations of us, but none the less, their lives are very similar to ours also. They face the same choices regarding love, sex, relationships and the future that we all do. And like us, they often make the wrong decisions because they think they know it all. But parents, you have to realize that you don’t know it all either.
The world we live in is very different from the world you did. And the choices we have to make are very different from the ones you had to. It’s time you start to realize we aren’t as perfect and well civilized when you’re not around. And just because you raised us in Sunday school doesn’t mean we believed in everything that was preached to us.
“College Hill” does just what it’s supposed to do. Chronicles the sometimes insane, drama-filled moments of black college life. Parents, watch it so you finally come to the realization that we aren’t always perfect. Just because you told us not to doesn’t mean we’re going to listen. You may not be prepared to discuss why your daughter doesn’t wear any underwear to class, but you need to realize she does it before she comes home with more than a degree three years later.