Mass Comm Majors

I remember an episode of The Simpsons during which the kicker for the Springfield college football team gets his leg severed by Homer. I believe Homer ran over the kicker in some sort of half-time float while drunk. Dr. Hibbert tells the kicker that he can always fall back on his academic training, because he'll never play football again, but is horrified and dismayed to find out the kicker is a Mass Comm major.

"I know, I know!" exlaims the distraught kicker. "'Tis a phony major!" He makes some further self-deprecating comments about "not being bright."

I've asked several of the Mass Comm majors in my 102 and 317 classes how they feel about this stereotype, only to get blank stares--and occasional drooling--in reply. When I took this job at Cook Library, I noted immediately the stack of Broadcasting and Cable magazines kept at the info desk, and when I asked Ferocity what was up with them she told me that several Mass Comm classes send their students in for it, and that the kids in those programs weren't particularly swift, so to make life easier for everyone involved the most recent issues are simply piled there for easy access. After helping about 100 of these students so far this semester, I'm convinced of the aptness of this particular stereotype.

First off, I can spot these characters a mile away. They often have moon faces, with glazed unfocused eyes and open-mouthed expressions. Their attempts to ask for the magazine are heavily weighted toward the monosyllabic, as in:

Uh, I'm looking for the thing with TV stuff?

or

Is there a TV show thing about cable here?

or

Have you ever heard of some articles about airwaves and TV shows?

or

The guy in front of my TV class says come here for some thing?

It's extraordinarily rare that a Mass Comm student will actually look for the magazine first, and it's even more rare that the student will know the title s/he is supposed to find. Getting them to fill in the Periodical Request Slip is often an adventure--I always tell them up front: "You only need to fill in the Title, your Name, and Today's Date," and I'll put a check mark next to these items so they can see clearly the fields I'm referring to. Inevitably they'll fill in the Title line and then ask "What's a VOL?" "I don't need that--just Title, Name, and Today's Date." "What's a snun?" "A what?" "A snun?" "I don't need your SSN! Fill in the DATE and your NAME." Vacant stare, pencil held in fist like a Kindergartner, the student loses his or herself in a labyrinth of information, and can longer compute. "I'll also need your ID." This causes trouble as well. "Can I keep my ID while I look at the magazine?" "No. I have to keep your ID here while you have the magazine." Lots of fumbling through pockets, and wrestling with zippers, and aggrieved flipping through of papers later, I'm offered .25 cents off Oreos coupons, short bus tickets, gum wrappers, cardboard coasters, joint rolling papers, individually wrapped Velveeta slices--but rarely an actual ID on the first try.

They have to copy an article out of the most recent issue, which makes for good fun. Ever torment a dog by hiding a ball behind your back, or pretending to throw a ball and watching the dog stare blankly into the distance, confused? That's these students in a nutshell when confronted with the enormous complexity of a copying machine. Too many buttons, too many lights, too many steps. Explaining a CopiCo card, and 10 cents a page, and how many dimes are in a dollar becomes exasperating after a while. One Mass Comm major yesterday--a young lady with her shirt buttoned incorrectly and half of her hair dyed and the other half not (she perhaps thinks ALL mirrors are sideview, and forgot to turn around)--after I laboriously explained how to use a vending machine to get the card needed, and helped her take the card out of the machine, and showed her the copier and the card reader, and demonstrated physically how to situate the page to be copied on the glass surface of the copier--after ten minutes of attempting to bring her up to speed on what is the simplest fucking goddam procedure she's going ever to have to do in life--she put the goddam CopiCo card on the glass and closed the copier over it and then stood back and stared, waiting for the machine to turn on.

There were a rash of these George Romero cast-offs shambling in here tonight, not one of them able to get through the requisite steps without substantial assistance. How do they get to their classrooms? How do they set their alarm clocks? Who feeds them? Christ--do they drive?