BET's College Hill: A Disgrace To Black Colleges

The heap keeps growing at Black Entertainment Television as the viewing value keeps going down the toilet.

B.E.T. (Black Entertainment Trash) and Tracey Edmonds ought to be ashamed of themselves. If you saw the recent episode of BET’s reality show College Hill-4, or even part of it, you know exactly what I am talking about.

After catching glimpses of this season, and seeing a You Tube.com video of College Hill-Season 4’s latest episode, I must say that Edmonds and BET have reached a new low.

Billed as a “must see” episode”, College Hill 4 literally became a mini-version of the WWF last Tuesday night. A brawl between a Cali girl (Krystal) and an islander (Vanessa) took center stage Tuesday night. The brawl ended with Vanessa being a bloody mess as Krystal used an object to hit her in the face during the brawl. It was sickening and sad. (See video above)

The reality show showcases students who attend historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) over one semester. Like MTV’s Real World, the chosen students live in a house together and their daily activities – good and bad - are revealed to the world. BET is seen in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean.

The real tragedy, however, is how BET continuously manipulates black college students and HBCUs for ratings. In March, PR Newswire reported that a record number of viewers tuned-in to the premiere of College Hill 4.

I've read that several students this season really aren't TRUE HBCU students. BET, Edmonds and the producers apparently pulled a few students from mainstream colleges and universities, and encouraged them to attend the historically black University of the Virgin Islands for one semester while BET taped the show - then after the semester was over, those students transferred back to their original non-HBCU schools.

It doesn’t sound too authentic if you ask me.

What is also disturbing is how BET/Edmonds Entertainment appears to have orchestrated and cultivated the Yankee vs. Islander divide to the point of disaster. It is socially irresponsible on the part of BET.

In previous seasons, BET and Edmonds Entertainment showed up at Southern University, Langston University and Virginia State University - all HBCUs. However, the top executives at Bleak Entertainment Television (BET), based on research, did not attend HBCU’s, which is why it appears they have no limitations on how they will portray HBCU’s and the “students” who attend them.

Now check this out:

-Debra Lee, President and Chief Operating Officer, graduated from Brown University in 1976.

-Reginald Hudlin, President of Entertainment, graduated from Harvard University in 1983.

-Robyn Lattaker-Johnson, VP of Programming Development, graduated from Art Center College of Design, year of graduation unknown.

-Tracey Edmonds, Executive Producer of College Hill, graduated from Stanford University in 1987.

Ironically, none of these people went to an HBCU based on available online biographies. However, these people are largely responsible for assembling and perpetuating a negative image of historically black colleges and universities. Would they be able to create such trash about their respective alma maters - Brown, Harvard, and Stanford? I wonder, but I don't think so. The BET Network and Viacom would probably be sued by these institutions of higher learning fast - and heads would roll. Immediate cancellation of this crap would follow. And even if HBCU alumni had been responsible for such refuse, they'd deserve the same criticisms.

We see with the mass murder of 32 students at Virginia Tech, all is not perfect at traditionally white institutions (TWIs), yet, for four seasons HBCU's have stood by idly and allowed BET's College Hill to repeatedly damage the rich legacies and purpose of HBCU’s with mostly negative imagery and stupidity by some of the students. At a time when HBCU's are struggling to increase enrollments at various campuses, College Hill's sensationalizing of HBCU's doesn't help.

Who would want to go to an HBCU after seeing some of these shows? When will faculty, staff, administrators, parents and students who care about HBCU's stand up and protest this trash BET and Edmonds are putting out?

I swear I hate BET and all that it stands for nowadays. A once rich medium for the black community has become 98% trash. And you know it has to be a dysfunctional network when it elects to run the equally-dysfunctional movie Soul Plane. Unless B.E.T. gets better, I hope and pray that Viacom will shut it down and put some people out of work like they did Don Imus.