“The College Tour” is an Amazon Prime series that details campuses and student life at universities around the country. Recently, the series filmed an episode on the campus of SWOSU. 

“Each episode of The College Tour tells the story of what life is truly like on college campuses across the country and around the world. From academics, housing, sports, career preparation, campus life/location and much much more. In this innovative and informative series, each story is told by real students attending the featured college or university right now,” the show’s bio on Amazon reads.

Season 13 was released on Amazon recently, and the episode detailing SWOSU is the first episode in this season. 

I enjoyed the episode and hearing the different perspectives of fellow SWOSU students. The students all did an excellent job portraying their experience at SWOSU and portraying the campus and area in a great light. I liked seeing the different parts of campus and hearing about some of the different programs. However, I had one big complaint. 

Obviously, as a Parks and Wildlife Law Enforcement Major, I am biased toward the program, but only one quick mention of the parks and recreation program was rather disappointing. As one of the most unique programs in the state and even the region, I do not understand not including the program. Gaining your CLEET certification while in college is not a very common thing. Not a single mention. A Wildland Fire Management program that includes a “Fire Club” that fights wildfires and performs prescribed burns. (The only such program in the Great Plains). Not a single mention. Classes that include Alpine Aventure, Ropes Course facilitation, Mountain Resource Management, Basic Handgun, I could go on. Not a single mention. A scuba class/program. No mention. The episode included Crowder Lake University Park, but only being included for around 30 seconds of a nearly 30-minute show was not only disappointing but frustrating. What are we doing?

This is not a common program to have at universities, so common logic would tell me this is something that they would want to have in the episode. Just a missed chance to show off something very cool. 

The episode was filmed in the summer (odd choice itself…), so even if there were no such parks and recreation students around (because our jobs are off in unique locations such as the Rockies and Pacific Northwest), some of this information could have been added in one way or another. In a perfect world, you could have even included some of the programs’ students at work, just as other students were shown doing their future professions. I know I would have happily included pieces of my job as a US Forest Service intern last summer, I would’ve even filmed it for them.

I understand it is often impossible to include everything in media (just like how I could add so much more to this article), but you’d think something this unique would have a place in the episode.

As they say: “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.” Just a missed opportunity to show off something very unique to SWOSU.