Recent public generalizations of certain groups of students within Boston University, including the release of “The BC,” are causing students and professors to question where these stereotypes originate.
On “The BC,” a show created by Boston College students, BU students are portrayed as “inner-city,” wearing Champion sweatshirts and dog tags. Bloggers on websites like UrbanDictionary.com call BU “a large school often referred to as a degree generator for those who do not concern themselves with academics. Stereotype has it the school’s main population is wealthy and immature.”
College of Communication Mass Communications professor Bettye Grable said stereotypes are often based on truth.
“I think that stereotypes are based on actual interaction that people have had with others,” she said. “They use that observation to affirm or disconfirm a stereotype. A lot of times they are true.
“The problem it creates is that stereotypes become the only image of, say, a BU student, or whoever else is being labeled,” Grable continued.
Sociology department director John Stone said stereotypes are based on some supposition of truth, calling them “a form of prejudice on the basis of assumptions.”
“We wouldn’t like to do it,” he said, “but we do.”
As for preventing the development of stereotypes, Stone said having a completely open mind is not possible.
“A perpetually open mind is a perpetually vacant mind,” he said. “Breaking initial assumptions about a group or individual is possible, however, depending on the degree to which one has a rigid stereotype.”
“Children who grow up with a rigid view of things have a tendency to be stubborn [in changing their views],” he continued.
According to Stone, the dissolution of stereotypes is made much easier when two different people “have an equal state of interaction,” as opposed to a master and slave relationship.
“Hopefully, the university setting provides opportunities like that,” he said.
Grable said people must look past these stereotypes and arrive at their own conclusions.
“It would require people experiencing for themselves interactions and not making an assumption,” she said.
Grable also commented on the proliferation of stereotypes by the media, calling for television programming to “show a little more balance.”
“There needs to be as much balance to show the variations of people in a particular group – those who do and do not meet the stereotypes,” she said.
CAS junior Stephen Dionne said he witnesses the stereotyping of School of Management students as being “money-grubbing,” possibly due to the fact that the school is aimed at “future CEOs and other high-power people.”
Dionne said the possibility of having more interdisciplinary courses to increase interaction between BU students of different colleges would help to eliminate the stereotypes.
College of Communication sophomore Lindsay Dahl said the higher rate of affluent people at BU than at other colleges is a possible source of the stereotypes.
COM sophomore Trevor Stonefield said “there definitely are other people of all sorts of financial and cultural backgrounds.
“There are people who stick out prominently and reflect certain stereotypes,” he said. “But if you look beyond, you can find any type of person.
“I think it’s something personal,” he continued. “You have to take your own personal initiative to look beyond these stereotypes.”
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