Kollege Life

Here we are, three days since the premier of the new MTV show “College Life”, and the UW is still standing, and the world is still turning. It’s a half-hour show that runs Monday night at 9:30 about four kids and their “life experiences” as UW-Madison students. They carried camcorders around and recorded just about everything.

I DVR’d it and finally got around to watching it. I gotta hand it to the creators and producers of the show. They’ve cast the show perfectly! Of course, four “regular” college kids wouldn’t be very interesting to watch. They found some dandies. It’s not reality TV, it’s REAL, says the promo.
There’s the girl from Mukwonago who’s extremely proud of her “v-card”. She’s a virgin and she’s going to tell you about it every chance she gets. There’s her “ex”-boyfriend from Mukwonago, who told us he considers her his “property”…even though she wants to meet new boys at college and date them.

She just can’t understand why the two of the can’t “just be friends” now. He can’t understand why she won’t “go out with him” any more…even though the two of them seem to be constantly together.
There’s the mandatory minority person….a boy from suburban Chicago, who apparently thinks it’s very important that we know his mom is Jamaican and his dad is Caucasian - or, at least, the editor of the show seemed to think it was important, because in most of the scenes the young man is in, race is the topic in one way or another.

And it wouldn’t be complete…and it wouldn’t be representative of the UW-Madison student body…without Party Boy. He’s a party animal and he’s come to college to drink and have fun. He’s already set the academic bar pretty low….telling his mom he’d study hard enough to get straight C’s…but he’s set the outrageousness bar pretty high. His dorm room is party central, and he’s already, in the first week of the show, been warned by the residence hall authorities that he’s gonna get bounced if he doesn’t tone things down.

Predictably, UW brass don’t like the show, with Dean of Students Lori Berquam saying it places too much emphasis on dysfunctional relationships and drinking escapades. My old radio pal Sly was pretty harsh on the Dean, noting her appearance in a Channel 3 news story about the show by commenting that she oughtta put on a little makeup and buy some better clothes if she’s going to represent the UW. First, UW brass endorsed the show and cooperated…but when they saw the direction it was taking, backed out.

I’ll watch the show a couple more times to see if it’s headed in any interesting directions…but mainly, I’ll watch it because it’s fun to see local places on national TV.