<p>I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents, as a student who is currently an RA…</p>
<p>I definitely agree that it is very likely that the RA may have been expressly told in training to direct contact from parents to his or her supervisor. I haven’t had that particular experience, but I do know that some of the most difficult people that my boss has to deal with are parents, and not the students. Maybe the RA could have sent an email back, but we aren’t perfect people and I know that some nights I am so busy I barely even have time to send an email… (Obviously not tonight.) </p>
<p>It’s certainly not in our job descriptions to check on sick students when it is not an emergency. We can direct them to campus resources but outside of that there isn’t all that much we can do. At my school, we actually aren’t even allowed to transport students to the hospital, so even then the most we could do would be to contact EMS if it was serious. Other than that, I probably would have checked in earlier as the RA did, but especially so late at night, I probably wouldn’t have knocked given that the daughter or roommate could be sleeping. If the daughter was too sick to leave the room to get food, I could fill out a sick meal pass form to allow a friend to use her card to purchase food for her. </p>
<p>Of course I would express my concern and try to remember to follow up, but for me at least, there are almost 200 people who live in my building, some of which will get sick. There are six of us RAs, but we are all very busy people and only so many of us are around at any given time. If there is ever a true emergency, we are around on required hours, there is usually someone in the building, emergency numbers are posted on the staff office door and windows, and we are trained to deal with it. We cannot do everything though.</p>
<p>^^^and your kid will get major friend points for being the one with cough medicine/band aids/thermometer when a hallmate is feelling cr*ppy. Same idea as having the toolkit for move-in!</p>
<p>Smithie, I didn’t know how to do that stuff (or the whole financial thing), either. Learned it on the fly in college, the hard way.</p>
<p>I literally crawled to my student health center twice–once with food poisoning from a world famous oyster bar (never liked raw oysters after that), and once with mono. Never told my parents a word about either episode until many years later, after I had graduated & it was distant memory. Didn’t want my folks to worry & the medical center / infirmary was taking the best care they could of me. Also did NOT inform them when I had other medical issues–fell & scraped myself up badly on asphalt contaminated with duck poop and during finals couldn’t move my head or neck (was told by the doc, “just relax”). It all turned out OK & didn’t figure my folks could have done anything anyway.</p>
<p>Have no regrets & it seems our kids are similarly shielding us from trivial things we can’t really do much to help in. S did tell us when he was rear-ended & going to an urgent care clinic for headache & pain (which resolved). Also am sometimes told about colds, etc. but never thought to ask their friends and especially never an RA to check on them. They know how to reach their friends & would if they felt it was important.</p>
<p>My oldest daughter got a horrible stomach bug during first semester finals…it never occured to me to contact the RA , or anyone at the school. She did have a close friend from high school that was also a student there who brought her some gingerale , but understandably kept her distance.
It is difficult when your child is so far away and so sick . I came very close to flying up and getting her home ( she was coming home for Christmas ) , but she managed to get thru it</p>
<p>Your daughter belonged at the infirmary not chasing her roommate out of the room. It was also very rude of her to call you at 10pm when there wasn’t a darn thing you could do about it. Princess is in for a rude awakening sometime between now and when she and her husband and 2 kids all have the flu and she is the one waiting on everybody else hand and foot. College is about growing up (among other things) Stand back and let her do it.</p>
<p>I do not mind a call at 2am. although I am getting up at 5:30am to go to work. I told all my family, including my S. in his 40s that I want to know if anybody is in trouble/danger. Sometime talking to them makes a difference, you might decide to hop in a car and go or buy an airplane ticket and fly. I am very upset when I was not aware that somebbody was in great danger and even ended up in a hospital. 40 year olds sometime forget that we are parents forever and ever. 10pm call is more than welcomed.</p>
<p>Please remember that most colleges today don’t have infirmaries.</p>
<p>All they have are health centers, which are basically urgent care places that are open from 9 to 5 on weekdays. Students can also use community facilities, which are basically urgent care places that are open evenings and weekends, or perhaps an emergency room. But once they get their prescriptions and are kicked out the door, they’re on their own, in an environment in which good self-care is difficult.</p>
<p>Elleneast: The op did she what she thought was best I agree but so the RA, the RA did check in on her. RA’s at my D’s school are told not to communicate with parents because of the confidentiality laws. This RA probably did what she was told in forwarding the email to the RD. If she had answered the OP’s email then she sets herself up to harassed if the sender does not like the response.</p>
<p>Do you all have your children’s RA’s emails and / or phone number? I don’t. I briefly met D’s RA (as in - she walked by and was introduced) but she never gave us any contact info. I never met S’s at all. It seems to me that the RA’s are for the students’ benefit, not for the parents’ benefit. If there was some policy or issue where I felt I needed to intervene (and goodness, I hope not!), I think I’d work it through the student life office or some other administrative office, not an RA.</p>
<p>No way. It’s a total waste of health care dollars. (Think about it – if the "infirmary/clinic housed every case of on-campus strep, the college would have to build a full-sized hospital.) And quite frankly, there was little medical reason for the roomie to leave (unless they were sharing saliva). While a nice gesture, medically unecessary.</p>
<p>~60% of strep diminishes in as little as 12 hours of antibiotics and sleep.</p>
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<p>Exactly. And let’s follow the train of thought: RA emails mom back with a link to the health center/on-call nurse. Mom says ‘thanks, I already have that, but I want YOU (RA) to go check on my D.’ Then, RA is in a difficult place.</p>
<p>OP: instead of the RA, why not call the athletic office and speak to a trainer? If anyone should be as concerned as you about your D’s health, it is the athletic department who is paying her to be on campus.</p>
<p>“If she had answered the OP’s email then she sets herself up to harassed if the sender does not like the response.”</p>
<p>Amen. Regardless of the circumstances, it is self-contradictory to respond to a 10 pm email by saying “It’s not my job to respond to your emails at 10 pm.” That’s responding to the email! Further, how is the RA supposed to know who is really a parent and who is a stalker trying to confirm which dorm a young woman lives in? </p>
<p>Schools are very smart to have this policy.</p>
Me neither. I think D’s dorm has an RA, but I’m not sure. I didn’t check for smoke alarms or sprinklers either. Guess I’m not the mother I thought I was…</p>
<p>How is that rude? My kids call me at 10:00 at night all the time because they know I’m up. And I call them. I’d way rather get a call at 10:00 than a call at 2:00 a.m. I don’t care if my kids are 50, if they want to call me at 10:00 to tell me they don’t feel well, they can.</p>
<p>I just checked the information we as parents got at my D’s college and it actually says in there that parents are to contact the Resident Life office with any concerns as the RA and RD will not respond and will forward any communication to res life</p>
<p>Different parts of the country, different expectations, I think. QMP had a “FroCo,” and I had no idea who that was. I don’t think they had any kind of assistants after that.</p>
<p>However, when there is an RA, and it is the first week of school for a freshman, I don’t actually think it’s out of bounds for a parent to contact the RA. If the school doesn’t want parents to contact an RA at all, they should say so up front, rather than leaving the RA to deal with it. I think that the RA’s can be advised on how to draw the line between general information (e.g., the directory-type information mentioned above) that they can provide, and personal information they cannot provide. </p>
<p>I think that people who work for an institution should generally be responsive to “the public.” More so if this is a public university.</p>
<p>Just for clarity, when I suggested that the RA respond with something like “We don’t normally do that,” I meant that in terms of checking in on the freshman, not in terms of responding to parents’ emails. Otherwise, Hanna’s point about self-contradiction would surely apply.</p>
<p>If the university in question did not want the parents to contact the RA, why did the OP have the RA’s email address?</p>
<p>Also, the issue about the potential stalker is a valid one, but if the information about the dorm addresses is already contained in the online student directory, then it’s readily available without contacting the RA. If the student were already concerned about a stalker (or someone from the student’s past), the student can opt to have the address excluded from the directory. Then the RA would not release it, because it would not be “directory information.”</p>
<p>QuantMech. you may have just answered your own question about how did they get the RA’s email address. I know at my D’s school if you know the persons name you can look up the student directory and email addresses are right there. I don’t agree with that but that’s the way it is. As I said in the post right before yours my D’s college was upfront about it.</p>
<p>I have never had RA’s info. I did not think of them as babysitters. However, I have tried (not very successfully) to convince my D. to have all emergency numbers handy with her and create a little card with all her allergies (they are life threatenning) in case she is not capable to communicate, but can pull the card to show to medical personal. I strongly believe that these are most crucial. RA is just another student and a very temporary figure in your child’s life. You child will be on her own very soon, they need to have emergency plan engraved in their heads (I know it is not happenning with my own D. either and she is 22).</p>
<p>percussiondad, I think that the information that your D’s college provided, to contact the Residence Life staff and not the RA’s is a great way of handling things, if the university does not want parents to contact the RA’s. That explains things up front.</p>
<p>You are right, percussiondad, that the OP may have obtained the RA’s email from the student directory. In that case, I would wonder whether the daughter provided the name of the RA to the OP, or the university did. The two scenarios seem a bit different to me.</p>
<p>MiamiDAP, your D might want to wear a bracelet stating her allergies, if they are life-threatening.</p>