California kids mostly only consider states, UC's and some out of state publics (AZ, OR, WA)

Oh I’m sure people understand where it comes from.
I would only point out that conservatives aren’t racists, sexists, bigots, blah blah blah. We don’t care if your heritage isn’t white or have mixed ethnicity.
Btw this whole rich are conservatives liberals are poor is a complete myth.
Please stop buying into the divides created by those trying to keep the status quo for their own benefit. Stop looking for a racial divide, stop looking for an income divide, stop looking for a gender divide, stop looking for a rerligious divide, etc.

These fears are completely overboard and we need to help our children understand. Stop falling for this sad ploy of pushing conservophobia.
Don’t even get me started on the alt right having a voice bs.

That’s lovely to suggest these kids should travel, explore, get out of their bubble. But what we are asking them to do is commit four years of their lives before they have had the opportunity to do so. If I was black, or brown, or Asian, or gay, I may not jump at the chance to commit those four years to say, Alabama. You all might this it’s silly, naive, overblown, reactionary… and that’s fine. These are children. As their parents we can’t just write off their concerns, especially with the political climate we are currently living in. Question asked, question answered.

Oh I see where we differ the most. I think of them as young adults, not children. But on a friendly note, I can share that when I did have a young child, she was absolutely terrified before we went to California one year. She was convinced she would die in an earthquake or mudslide or be eaten by tigers escaping from the zoo, all of which actually had happened to others in the Bay Area around that time. Fortunately we were safe and she laughs about it now. And she’s glad she went to see that area for herself.

My CA kids get a lot of liberal fear mongering from their teachers, friends and social media.
They could easily be afraid of half the country.
I temper their education with devil’s advocate arguments as well as alternative opinions to help them develop a healthy skepticism about all forms of news and information.
It seems like many parents want to nurture those concerns and fears because they mirror their own.
And, only in America would anyone call 18 year olds “children”.

My kids were concerned about universities that have a history of highly segregated Greek life and the fact that so many seemed ok with that.

California residents are very lucky to have amazing public and private schools to choose from. As California parents, we have funded the public schools with our tax dollars, what is wrong with our kids attending these schools?

As far as diversity, there is quite a bit of diversity on our block, in our town and all over our state. That doesn’t mean that our kids live in a bubble. My kids have visited over half the states in our country as well as several foreign countries.

To each their own. My son wants to attend a school in CA, OR or WA. He prefers the weather and the PAC-12 sports. Fine by me!

Maybe adulthood comes sooner in your part of the country, couldn’t tell you. My daughter is 17 and will still be 17 we’ll into her freshman year of college. Yes, she’s still legally a child. How that has any bearing on the topic at hand, I have no idea.

It’s one thing to stay in CA for personal reasons…and there are many.
It’s another to write off the Midwest and Southern states as emotionally and possibly physically dangerous.
That’s just silly…and really unenlightened.

I don’t think it is helpful to mock another poster who is expressing their thought process. We can listen to each other and disagree without name calling. Let’s strive for respect and compassion and finding mutual ground.

We all want our kids to thrive. Some people are more of a risk taker than others. Some people fear the unknown and need time to process changes.

My kid goes to college far away - eyeballing it I would say the equivalent of London to Lisbon. One expects things to be different and it is hard to gauge local conditions and issues well enough to reach a reasoned judgement.

@CaBeachMom From the beginning of this thread, the message has been that it’s wrong to stereotype red state people. This message has mostly been advanced by posts stereotyping and bashing California students, California in general, and of course good ol Berkeley and its roving band of rioters. The highlight was definitely when the OP went full tea party and exited with a mic drop.

My apologies to @socalmom007 .
After reading so many of these posts it really does seem that people need to come together and, as I am a native California resident (rare I know) I truly wish that people here would just be a little more skeptical of the constant fear mongering even at the elementary level.
My niece, who is seven, was told in a mock election at school (weird, I know) that the people who might think of supporting Trump must hate women like he does…by her teacher.
I do think CA kids need to get out and see for themselves.

@Jliu32472 Red herring much? I didn’t see anybody recently discussing what you’re arguing about. But I’ll bite and respond to one of your points. Any conservative, who is a conservative because of things in the bible is just a sexist. That point simply cannot be argued. I may be atheist but I’ve read the bible cover to cover and oh boy there is some messed up sexist and racist stuff in there.

In a country where transgender people are still attacked, where POC/middle eastern immigrants are discriminated against, it helps to be in a larger city where there are more people like yourself. Saying people are going “overboard” is not really relevant unless somebody is saying “Everybody besides CA residents is backwards” which nobody is saying, btw.

@roycroftmom Houston is a large diverse modern city that has moved with the 21st century - the same cannot be said about places in the middle of nowhere in TX, or the rest of the south IMO.

There are definitely places in CA that are more conservative than a city like Houston, but I don’t see people desperately trying to go to school in Sebastopol, or Morgan Hill lol.

@lalalander111 You clearly lack a lot of knowledge about different political leanings in CA, and I recommend you learn a bit more before doing the same thing you’re criticizing other people for doing.

@Capecodder2014 You posted while I was still crafting my response - hitting the nail on the head.

History of segregated sororities and fraternities, or current situations where the sororities and fraternities are still highly segregated? Seems that the latter (which still exists at some college campuses, as revealed by chapter photo albums) would be more of a concern than the former.

For our California family, it has nothing to do with values, culture, or anything like that. It comes down to money. We most likely will be full pay no matter what colleges my daughters get into. Perhaps they could get a modest merit award from somewhere like Alabama, but with the high cost of travel and just the logistics of getting our kids back and forth over 2,000 miles to somewhere like Tuscaloosa a few times a year is something we don’t want to do.

@ucbalumnus I was trying to not get the Greek defenders or the “non Greeks are plentiful at those schools” worked up. We are well aware that it continues to a current issue.

I think kids just feel more comfortable being in the general location they grew up in. My son had no desire to leave to New England for school. He felt he has good options right here and felt no need to search out schools far away. He also needed to find a school where he felt comfortable and the people were what he envisioned college having. Whatever that means. Beauty and Love is in the eyes of the beholder. People know what they like when they see it.

I would think CA kids are no different.

OP here.
Just caught up on this thread.
Family emergency.
It certainly is great to have such diversity of experience and opinions here.
What a great thread with so many people sharing.
These are certainly interesting times.

For me, I wrote off the south during my college search because I didn’t want to live there. College often means internships, job offers, etc. And I didn’t want to go to college anywhere I wasn’t ok getting a job offer afterwards. For me, that meant being near a coast, but also not in hurricane territory.

My kid’s college belongs to an association of colleges where a student can go to another campus for a semester or year. If your student does not go to a different part of the country, encourage him or her to “study abroad” or do an internship in another part of the US. We need to get to know one another better!