6.28.2007

Urban Legend

On last night’s CSI:NY (Some Buried Bones), a rerun from February of this year, reference was made to a college policy of awarding straight A’s to anyone who has suffered emotional distress as, for example, experiencing the death of a roommate. This idea was also featured on Law & Order: Criminal Intent and even on an episode of The Simpsons as well as in the films Dead Man on Campus and Dead Man’s Curve. No school apparently has such a policy; the story is really an urban legend. But, I wonder how many people have watched these TV shows and movies and think this policy does exist. And I wonder why TV and film writers write about this ridiculous "policy". Snopes.com (from which I took some of the above information) gives a thorough but brief explanation of this urban legend (http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/suicide.asp) along with a good suggestion for additional information.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, I would say that some people that fall in a lower socio-economic class may find this interesting and possibly believe this information too be true. Hollywood does this to some people by creating a fiction based story that seems real. Too support this, this same show your writting about, according too the media has put some kind of strain and false expectations on the real units used in real life.