My theory is it was too much different world and fu*king queen latifah.
Lots of truth there. While I was admittedly somewhat 'down with the Queen' and did watch many episodes of 'Different World', those characters ended up having *way* too much influence over the black students on white college campuses across the South.
I can't say anything about what was going on at black schools like Spelman or Morehouse during that time, but at State, Carolina, Duke, etc., we ended up with a bunch of Freddie and Shazza wannabes.
Even my own sister - who was raised in a proper household (the same one that produced me, in fact
) - became one of 'them' over at UNC. She consistently marries herself to a position and establishes her talking points before even listening to the entirety of what she intends to argue against.