How the Media Portrays College
College students have always been given something of a bad reputation by the media and a few outliers that have made themselves famous. Whether it was an unruly fraternity, some campus protestors or whoever you can possibly think of, these students aren’t the real norm of college. Really, a group of that many kids living together, who will soon make up the adult population, can’t really be that homogeneous. So what are they really like and why are they portrayed certain ways?
The media has only shown one side of the college student story. Not everyone here is some kind of radical protestor or drunk with nothing in between. Not everyone is trying to take advantage of younger girls while also trying to sleep with a professor for a slightly higher grade. These are the outliers. Most college students are just normal people looking to find their way in the world and also get to know themselves. They want to make friends and get good grades and all of that.
There are two main reasons why college kids are portrayed the way they are by the media: 1960s hippie protests and the movie Animal House. These would go on to greatly influence the way college students are understood by the “square” media over the last forty years. The older generations, whether they went to college or not, oftentimes just think that all the students who go to an institution of higher education are just there to get drunk and then go and complain.
Think about it: the only college students you ever hear about besides sports players are the ones who get in trouble for alcohol or fraternity problems while or the ones who complain about something trivial within the government. Unfortunately, that just isn’t the way things really are.
College students are really a rich blend of every kind of person you can imagine from Republicans to normal left with students with everything in between. Believe it or not, there are college students that don’t even drink. Really the college world isn’t what everyone perceives it to be, even if there are some out there who fit the perceived mold perfectly.
