On Campus – Not All Lessons Happen In The Classroom
by Karen Tortora-Lee on March 22, 2011
Looking back now, a movie like The Breakfast Club seems so innocent, but back when I was a teen, watching the movie with my friends in the actual movie theater, we were in awe of how “a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal” could find common ground one Saturday – linked by the shared tragedy of a day together in detention.
On Campus, written by Steve Sherman and directed by Marc Santa Maria is a much weightier tale set not in the halls of a high school but in the dorm rooms, class rooms and connecting paths of a college campus. And while the same familiar characters populate the story – the jock, the popular girl, the sensitive guy, the angsty artistic girl (with a few new faces thrown in: the funny Jason Segel-esque side kick and the studious, sweet Mexican girl) – the tale being told is far different. On this campus the stakes are higher, the choices are harder, and the tragedy is no longer as quaint as a Saturday spent locked up in the school library. No, here, On Campus, these kids are literally dealing with life and death.
