When this article first came out, I got very frustrated and wrote this response, but never posted it. Now I'm finally getting around to it. Read the article, watch the video if you haven't already, and then my comments.
I would just like to throw this out there. I participated in the Emerson LipDub and had a blast with the whole experience. Imagine a huge group of over 400 of your peers coming together and producing something everyone can be proud of. There was a huge premiere on campus showing the video and most students went back to their dorms to wait for it to appear on YouTube later that night. We were genuinely excited with the prospect of the video going viral, and eager to help it along. We hoped it would mean increased visibility for the school, attracting a wider range of applicants, as well as the thought of hundreds of thousands of people catching a glimpse of what Emerson College culture means to us. I speak now on my own behalf, at the risk of misrepresenting others. I have been shocked by the negative feedback the video has received. I will address the criticisms mentioned above by Ms. Meah. She correctly writes that many comments have mentioned that the video shows misuse of class time. This is simply incorrect. The entirety of the video was shot on November 11, Veteran's Day, so there were no classes in session. Not one of the over 400 students who helped make this video happen skipped a class to participate. The comments suggesting that tuition fees helped fund the project are similarly misinformed and miss the point of an Emerson College education. The LipDub was created as a promotion for an extracurricular event, The 30th Annual EVVY Awards, which is the largest student-led multicam awards show in the country. Nothing taught by a professor can replace the experience of being on the largest video shoot held on the campus. The students that worked on this project are going to Emerson for this very reason, to participate in these extracurricular activities that offer experiences they won't find anywhere else. They are students majoring in Film and Video Production, Broadcast Journalism, Marketing, and Theatre, among others. The making of this video is as much a part of their education at Emerson as their classes. But Ms. Meah did not mention the more shocking, and more prevalent, criticisms of the video. I realize that this is the internet and some of this is to be expected, but watching the video grow, I was disappointed to see the YouTube video be used as a platform for homophobic and misogynistic comments. When the video was featured on the Yahoo! homepage, I saw more of the same, if more eloquently written. Almost every reposting of the video brought with it similar insults. It was difficult to witness something that my school was so proud of be reduced to a forum for judgment and hate. One day, I saw a professor I had this past semester respond to a particularly nasty comment regarding the women appearing in the video. She defended her female students who were alternatively being called "ugly cows" and "totally doable" on a video being viewed all over the world. Now one can browse the comments and see replies to her defense, now leveling misogynistic insults at my professor for trying to protest the hate. Do not mistake my purpose in writing this. It is not that I am not open to criticism of the video. Not every person of the now 850,000+ people who have viewed the video have to like it, and by all means, they should leave comments expressing their beliefs. Just please, if you comment, be informed and be kind. Do not seek to tarnish the product of our hard work with personal attacks. I, for one, am too proud to sit idly by as hate overshadows Emerson College's time in the spotlight, however brief. Nicholas Reynolds Emerson College - Class of 2014