The Script Began As a Charles Manson High School Movie
… But they wanted more raunchy and low-brow material.
When no one at National Lampoon liked writer Harold Ramis’s script for a piece called ‘Freshman Year,’ he worked with Doug Kenney to write ‘Laser Orgy Girls,’ which was all about Charles Manson and his high school exploits. So essentially, the script began as a Charles Manson high school movie. Can you imagine such a thing? It would surely be banned in today’s culture.
Source: IMDb
But after a few drafts, the movie changed completely, and they decided that it should be on a college campus so they could get away with more raunchy material. When director John Landis came on, the script was edited even more to remove scenes of a vomiting contest and other gross stuff.