Who Goes There? My Community College Education and NBC’s Community
By: Miranda Mccasland
Tags: College, Community College, Higher Education, University

My sophomore year at my community college, I was the supplemental instructor for a 200 level statistics course. I spent six hours of every week preparing and delivering lessons about statistics to students who chose to spend extra time outside of class learning the subject. I coached them through standard deviations in between stories of how they had decided to come to a community college, what their dreams were, what their lives looked like outside of this campus. At the same time, I worked in the admissions office and heard other stories as I toured prospective students around campus.

Never once did I hear or see a simple story. There were always multiple factors in their decisions and their lives. Someone might be older, but also incredibly in-tune to the culture of younger students around them. They might have been a high-achiever in high school, but their only reason for coming to a community college was never that they had a hidden addiction and emotional breakdown. Others were ‘nerdy,’ but not socially inept.

Community follows a set of main characters: Jeff (hotshot stripped of his position as a lawyer when it’s discovered he never went to law school), Britta (failed social activist who didn’t finish high school), Abed (Palestinan pop-culture encyclopedia with little social skills), Shirley (African-American woman who is a devout Christian with issues accepting other people), Annie (enthusiastic student who was so concerned with success that she developed an addiction and had an emotional breakdown), Troy (high school jock who lost his football scholarship after an injury) and Pierce (senior citizen with no understanding of current culture/norms and issues with tolerance).

A diverse set of characters to sit around a library table, yes? Well, maybe. There’s a diversity of life experiences displayed here that often isn’t present in other media. There’s also something dirty hidden: a heavy reliance on stereotypes.

Stereotypes are conscious or unconscious overgeneralization of people and characters. Dyer says that these are fixed and rigid in our minds and that those who fall into a stereotype are designed to be excluded with no choice in the matter (essentially ‘condemned’ to their status within a stereotype with no way out) (355).

The idea that a senior citizen would struggle with cultural relevance and tolerance of others is a stereotype — it gives little room for character growth, relies on the audience’s assumption that an older man coming to community college must be a failure in some way and must be missing something that us ‘normal people’ not going to a community college in our sixties. It relies on an ageist bias and a bias against community college students (they must be old and out of touch).

Similarly, Troy’s character relies on a stereotype: a young Black man whose chance to go to a four-year school is ruined because of an injury that takes him away from his athletic scholarship potential. Athletic, young, Black and without an opportunity to go to a four-year. Troy sees character growth in the series, but it is constantly teased out that he was a ‘jock.’ Failed dreams that land him at a community college — it’s not his first choice.

Each character falls within their own community college student stereotype. Failed career. Behind the times. Socially awkward.

It’s in stark contrast to how many four-year students are shown as young, relevant, academically concerned, popular and traditionally successful in the eyes of American culture/media (Toblowsky 18). In an incredibly American/Western culture, these are positive stereotypes. You want to be those things.

It’s no surprise, though. The TV student characters attending two-year colleges examined by Bourke are often found to be coming from high-school educations that are less than impressive or defining themselves as “non-intellectual” (61).

Here’s the reality check: my peers at community college were never just one thing. Their choice to attend community college wasn’t only because they had failed in some other realm of their life. Some were older, but they were never unwilling to learn or change their ways. They were rich, complex beings. Displaying the community college student as only a stereotype is not only harmful to the self-identity of those choosing community colleges, but also causes others to opt out of the community college experience entirely.