"Earning A Degree Can Sometimes Prove Deadly": Campus Nightmares

The American cable channel Lifetime: Television For Women, founded in 1984 & controlled by media conglomerate Hearst, has debuted a new entry in its' documentary programming. It is called "Campus Nightmares," & is produced by Indigo Films, which describes the series as "A new one-hour recreation series (?)...From dorm room encounters gone awry to teacher-student relationships gone bad, earning a degree can sometimes prove deadly." In the few episodes that have aired already are "undergraduate faculty with murder in their hearts, (who) will do anything to preserve their dark secrets...first-hand accounts of the perpetrators behind America's most shocking campus murders"

With material like this, "Campus Nightmares", will likely touch upon some salacious stories of real-life university-related transgression. However, I have no idea what 'recreation television' could mean, other than perhaps the latest euphemism for 'reality show'. ('docu-drama was en vogue just weeks ago)

On the website of the Lifetime: Television For Women family, which includes Lifetime Movie Network & Lifetime Real Women, the channel states it is "committed to offering the highest-quality entertainment & information programming & advocating a wide-range of issues affecting women & their families." 

Institutions of higher learning in the United States have been the site of armed violence since 1892 (at the very least): Shootings have occurred @ Kansas University (1892, 2 shot), Cambridge Commercial College (1906, 2 shot), New York University (1908, 1 shot), Negro Normal School (1918, 1 shot), University of California (1919, 3 shot), Syracuse (1921, 2 shot), School of Dental & Oral Surgery (1931, 4 shot), Ohio State (1949, 1 shot), & Penn State College (1950, 3 shot)...& that is only counting those incidents which occurred prior to the year 1951. As those of the bold, new millennium, we live with university & school shooting as a seasonal, if-not-monthly phenomenon.

"Campus Nightmares" will have a pool of material from the deadly incidents of the type mentioned above, to more banal sexual misdeeds & hazing. All stories will apparently be linked by the terror experienced by participants whose learning institutions were disrupted by violence, deceit, or destruction. 

On of the early episodes of this programme highlights the Chico State Hazing Incident (1 fatality), which occured when students "...decide to join a fraternity & begin their grueling month-long initiation process...the two friends had no idea what they were getting themselves into until it would be too late." Sounds like a unifying sentiment for all those who experience "Campus Nightmares"-- whether one is shot, raped, or spanked with a paddle.

For more on Lifetime: Television For Women

For more on The Chico State Hazing Incident

For more on Hazing......er, 'whoops' Hazing