When MTV Plays Pied Piper, Students Just Follow Along

The MTV talent scouts arrived about noon on a recent spring day at Taft High School with an open invitation to instant, if fleeting, fame.

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All the students had to do was ditch.

Teen-agers from the Woodland Hills campus mobbed recruiters, who were seeking contestants for the new dating game show “Singled Out.”

MTV driver Patrick McGee joked that he felt like a stranger offering candy to school kids.

Seeing the commotion, Taft Assistant Principal Elois McGehee put one foot in the van and a hand on the door while she asked the students to return to school.

She didn’t have a chance.

“We’re taking these dynamic, energetic young people and putting them on TV,” said Annie Wood, a contestant production assistant. “MTV rocks. Let’s go.”

Minutes later, the vanload of aspiring MTV talent sped down the Ventura Freeway, en route to a Burbank television studio and rocking to the beat of the Beastie Boys.

They spent the next four hours taping the new show, leaving in a state of youthful euphoria, rewarded for their ditch day with armfuls of souvenirs such as T-shirts, baseball caps and gift certificates.

Marcia Schiebel, a Taft senior who stood swaying to the beat of Naughty by Nature’s “Hip Hop Hooray” on the sound stage, called it “a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

McGehee said it is ironic that the music network would take students from campus after years of trying to mitigate its sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll image with public service shows and advertising spots urging teen-agers to graduate, stay off drugs and avoid violence.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin agreed.

“I’m shocked,” Eastin said. “It’s a contradiction to say, ‘Stay in school’ and then come rip them out of the school for the benefit of a TV show.”

MTV spokeswoman Linda Alexander called the incident “a fluke.” It is not the practice of the music network’s contestant coordinators to recruit from high schools, she said.

But on that particular day last month, contestant coordinators needed more teen-agers for the show. The taping was just a few hours away when recruiters met a Taft student at a music store on Ventura Boulevard. The student told them Taft seniors were excused early that day.

So the green van swung by the school, and the rest was easy.

Taft administrators suspended two students for their actions.