Frosh: Nine Months in a Freshman Dorm

Lots of people have been telling us about the sorry state of the current generation of young folks. The documentary Frosh is one of the few films that have actually taken the time to talk with them, not at them. Frosh has no social agenda or cultural axes to grind. Instead, it reaches for a sympathetic overview of new college students who are about to undergo that awkward transition from teenage angst to an uncertain adulthood.

Videotaped during the 1990-91 academic year at Stanford University, Frosh opens with a picture post-card presentation of fresh faces, blue California skies and parents practicing their last rites of familial grasp. But once the luggage is unpacked and the final goodbyes are made to departing station wagons, the freshman students begin zeroing in on each other, discovering both common pursuits and just how different they are from each other. They don't realize it, but they've just taken the first steps toward realizing how little they actually know. This is called “the college experience.”

Since cultural diversity is virtually the motto of Stanford, the young men and women who reside in the freshman dorm represent a wide sampling of racial and social backgrounds. Nick, the resident bi-sexual, has a deft ability to disarm the concerns of the more conservative dormies. Shayne is the good-girl-from-a-Catholic-background who discovers feminism. Brandi, who's from a very proper, upper-class African-American family, initially has problems understanding Monique, a black woman from Oakland who has to deal with a crackhead mother and a mostly absent father. Then there's Cheng, a Chinese-American man from Ohio who's solidly Midwestern. (This group sounds like a cast for a TV sit-com.)

But Frosh isn't concerned with a parade of one-liners. The filmmakers (Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine) stick with these people through nine months of rap sessions, beer blasts, paper writing, and test cramming. A few of the kids end up either dropping out or transferring to easier schools. They all undergo changes, especially in the ol' ego department.

What's most refreshing about Frosh is its direct and honest approach to college life. We've been bombarded by such mediocre films as PCU, Threesome, and With Honors, in which the average student age is 30 and the main area of interest is hormonal.

Not that sex is far from the thoughts of many of the students in Frosh, but it's obvious that they're still trying to figure it out. Several of the men conduct a hysterically funny debate about why it's called a blow job, while another guy simply pines for a nice girlfriend.

Now, that's college as I remember it.