Our View
A surprised school board
had no choice but to say no

East Brunswick High School would have been the perfect place for MTV to shoot its True Life: I’m a High School Senior documentary series. If what the cable network officials wanted was an average suburban high school with a large, diverse student population, a single place where they could find a dozen kids with completely different interests both in and out of school, they must have liked what they found on Cranbury Road.

It would have been a hoot for students, too, to see their peers become the focus of a nationally televised program. It would probably wind up changing the lives of those featured, for better or worse — but their being featured would, of course, be their call, and their parents’. And it would be helpful in a number of ways for the rest of the student population to watch what a mix of their classmates is going through, be it with stressing over exams, partying, playing sports, looking ahead at college or work, dating and, in general, living life.

MTV has a reputation built over many years with numerous educational and revealing documentaries and real-life programs. But they need to have program control in order to make them — something that most East Brunswick Board of Education members weren’t ready to turn over. And who can blame them? They were simply told that MTV was in their school selecting students for the show, and that filming would begin shortly. They had no time to digest it all.

If the rejection of MTV was anybody’s fault, it was MTV’s.

Perhaps the network was led on, as some have said, by the district’s administration, which apparently failed to seek school board approval before giving MTV the green light. But MTV should have known to seek formal approval and cover its bases before wasting its own resources and getting students’ hopes up.

Had the board been contacted earlier and presented with solid details about the filming and the program, along with plenty of time to think about it, this whole thing might have worked out.

It doesn’t matter now, unless MTV decides to come back another year. More likely, though, is that we’ll see the true lives of some other high school students.