<p>It seems to me that Oberlin gets an unusual number of off-hand references in pop culture, especially TV. I hear passing references to Oberlin fairly often, but not to other similar liberal arts colleges. Here are some examples. Please add others.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>On Gossip Girl, season 2, after Blair Waldorf learns that she is not getting into Yale she says "I can still apply to Oberlin."</p></li>
<li><p>On an old episode of Law and Order a physicist who sent someone a bomb did it to kill his professor, who ruined his efforts to get a job at Oberlin.</p></li>
<li><p>On 30 Rock, Lutz is an Oberlin grad.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>These are just three, but there are lots of others. I don't hear similar references to other colleges such as Bates or Carleton or Macalester or Swarthmore or Haverford. Are there similar references to other colleges that I don't hear because I went to Oberlin and I pick up on them?</p>
<p>My guess is that there are a disproportionate number of Oberlin mentions because there are a lot of creative types who went to Oberlin and who migrate to TV shows. Or the writers on TV shows know Oberlin grads and want to poke fun at them by (for example) making Lutz an Oberlin grad.</p>
<p>What do you think? Does Oberlin get more than its share of such pop culture references?</p>
<p>Your proposed guesses are very in line with my guesses. I’m very attuned to pop culture references of Oberlin – cinema studies and social media and all that, they sort of combine in this mush of hearing Oberlin, all the time, especially when it comes to media.</p>
<p>The only other thing I’d venture an idea of is that Oberlin’s reputation (good, bad, goofy) means that it’s recognizable as a very particular kind of school and for lack of a better word, we’re beginning to be typecast as “that college” when anyone needs a non-Ivy non-university.</p>
<p>Oberlin’s reputation (good, bad, goofy) means that it’s recognizable as a very particular kind of school: yep. Jon Stewart definitely drops an Oberlin reference every few months to evoke “quirky lefty crunchy liberal-artsy idealists” … some times more favorably than others.</p>
<p>According to the brief filed in the US Supreme Court in the University of Texas case by a group of colleges including Oberlin, around half of the African Americans who had graduated from college in the US by 1900 graduated from Oberlin. Nancy Giles flashed her old Oberlin ID on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday. She is a contributor to the show. Oberlin of course is heavily featured in the HBO show “Girls” and then there is Lena’s book deal.</p>
<p>Saw a recent TV show (can’t remember the name because I was channel surfing) where this girl says to her mom “I’m dropping Oberlin from my list of schools, and I’m keeping Wesleyan, Brown and Princeton.” Mom: “Why?” Daughter: “It’s like in Ohio!”</p>
<p>In Stephen L. Carter’s latest novel, The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln is defended by a law firm that hires “twenty-one-year-old Abigail Canner … a young black woman with a degree from Oberlin.” </p>