<p>In our zero-tolerance school district (no plastic knives in your lunch box or tylenol in your purse, or else!!!) we taught the kids this lesson before kindergarten: “I want to speak to a lawyer!” Law and Order has continued to drill the message in their minds.</p>
<p>Prosser, glad your S appealed and that you are making some headway with the new school. Sounds like we should tell our kids to ask for an attorney whether it’s on-campus folks or the local cops.</p>
<p>Prosser, thanks for sharing this long, sad tale. I hope things are working out for your son.</p>
<p>I hope this comment isn’t way off from the discussion. I just read the OP and just have a minute so I wanted to share. My S has a friend who did not finish out his first semester of college. He just left, quit, no withdrawl just stopped going. Without getting into the reasons for this I will tell you that his parents were able to speak with a counselor at a local LAC. After this student met with this counselor not only was he admitted to the college without any look at his college record he even got a merit scholarship based on his HS record. Now that he has started over he is doing great. Sometimes you just get the wrong fit the first time around. In this case the student was able to ignor the mistake. Perhaps your son will be equally lucky.</p>
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<p>That sounds like a stretch unless his roommate told him that he could take the beers. It would otherwise seem like theft. We have bottles of wine in our home, mostly for cooking but some for drinking. My wife is the only one in the house that drinks it; the rest of us have an aversion to it (probably genetic). My guess is that the police could charge most families in the United States for having alcohol in the house where there are minors. </p>
<p>If the school allows a 21-year-old to have alcohol in the room where there is a minor, then how could they wind up calling the police and charging the 21-year-old unless the minor said something? That would seem like tossing in a charge to make the trip worthwhile.</p>
<p>My son read the honor code at his school and was pretty shocked at the potential
problems related to roommates. He hates the concept of getting blamed or punished
for the behavior of someone else.</p>
<p>One of the schools we visited had a policy that if any alcohol or drugs were found in a room - you and your roommate would be kicked out of campus housing. I specifically asked if it belonged to the roommate and my son had nothing to do with it would he also be kicked off campus and the answer was yes. We immediately crossed the school off our list. I would never put S in the situation of being responsible for someone else’s actions.</p>
<p><going to=“” read=“” college’s=“” handbook=“”> Curious what this would fall under however or I fear I will be reading this all night!!</going></p>
<p>Good for you, DebateMom. That kind of stuff drives me crazy. It boils down to saying: “We don’t have the resources, the will or the competence to enforce our rules effectively or judiciously, so we’ll do it by pitting our students against each other.” You’d think they’d be embarrassed, but it takes a lot to embarrass people these days.</p>
<p>There is a rule posted in my residence hall stating that it is against the rules to be present during a violation, so if your roommate is drinking and you don’t leave, you will also get in trouble for not reporting them. This has caused a big fight between me and my roommate because I told her I was not willing to be put at risk for her behavior, so if she wants to drink she needs to do it elsewhere or I will have to tell. I put it a little more politely than that, but she didn’t take it very well anyway. If I get in trouble my parents won’t cosign my loan for next year and I am done with college until I’m 24, sorry kiddo! We have really not gotten along since, I am super uncool now. She drank in the room once before I had learned of the rule and her and her friends were being so loud and kept opening the door and leaving it open. Like I am supposed to believe we won’t get caught?</p>
<p>I would honestly rather submit to a weekly or even daily search than be pitted against my roommate. We have enough drama to deal with without threatening me to get me to babysit her. It should not be my responsibility to police her activities, or hers to police mine.</p>
<p>I will have to look more closely, but I was unable to find a rule on flippin on your roommate or being accountable for someone else’s actions. I didn’t see anything that would lead me to believe that. Then again, as Twisted has said, her rules were posted in dorm. And I have to agree, it’s ridiculous to pit people in a living situation against one another.</p>
<p>I did note however that there is a board comprised of faculty, students and administrators that pretty much dishes out the punishments at S’s school. I guess I like that students are part of the solution. However, it seems that most disciplinary things are in abuse of the honor code (although part of that is to turn people in you know are cheating but at least (or hopefully) they aren’t your roommate!).</p>
<p>I did note however that you can face disciplinary action for damage to dorms… and I have to admit I have a slight fear that we would get a bill for something. Son is not known for his grace (for lack of a better word) at times and I can so see him standing on a coffee table or similar for whatever reason and splintering the thing as if all coffee tables can hold 200 pounds. (note to self - mention this possibility to s next time he calls).</p>
<p>I am actually really curious if that rule is in our handbook, because I didn’t remember reading it before and I do tend to read those sorts of things pretty thoroughly. I wonder what happens if a rule is posted that isn’t actually in the handbook.</p>
<p>Interesting to hear from others. BCEagle, I agree. (BTW, I attended BC grad school, so of course we think alike!) I never thought to research any of this before S1 chose the small school he attends. After S1’s “incident” where the room was searched and the beers were discovered by police, I imagine the police were disconcerted not to find a stash of substances. (In the interest of full disclosure to CC readers, an item that could be considered paraphenalia was found. But no cannabis. Also, the students were locked out of their room for 24 hours by police who put a lock on the dorm door while they obtained a search warrant. Apparently, this has happened before at said university.) When I spoke to the residential life staff member, he assured me that the university would not be targeting these students. He said that he had, in fact, given permission to 21 year olds to keep small amounts of beverage in their rooms. He stated that he had not anticipated that my S should be charged with prohibited sales (furnishing alcohol to a minor) and hoped that we would get an attorney to fight it. I am not certain how far S1’s attorney will take this matter. His primary mission is to have S1’s charges dismissed.<br>
At the same time, I believe S1 needs to learn lessons about being accountable for his behavior. The university does warn students about the habits of local police. S1 tends to take a dim view of rules/laws that don’t make sense to him. I see many of these situations, such as that of Prosser’s son, as examples of people who get what they deserve whether they deserve it or not. In other words, they may need some societal limit setting, but not to the extent to which it plays out. IMHO, logical consequences seem to defy logic.
I will certainly explore the practices of the colleges which S2 may attend.
Anyone know of vitamin/herbal supplements that support the development of male frontal lobes?? There are advertised cures for just about every other human condition. lol</p>
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If you figure that out, I’ll buy! In fact, I know a bunch of people who would buy.</p>
<p>^^Me too, like in warehouse quantities from Sam’s Club or Costco’s. Have 2 recipients and a husband in regression.</p>
<p>You know I don’t mean to pile on and I can tell you are a deeply caring and involved parent wha has and is attempting to teach your son important lessons but this thread just adds to my frustration with the whole college as a business problem and their admissions matrix’. I have a son who goes to an incredibly difficult all boys prepartory school in columbus, ohio. The school requires two years of Latin and in the second semester of sophmore year they must almost read the equivalent of War and Peace in Latin; parse every sentence; verb, nouns, masculine, feminine and on and on. The Chemistry, Biology and even Algebra 2 are effectively college level. The kid is a (state champion) swimmer, gets up at 5:30 to practice before classes, practices after class for two hours and then has homework for at least three hoours after he gets home and eats. Then gets up the next day and does it again. He also volunteers at a hospital on saturday. Anyway, because he only has a 3.2 GPA he can’t even get on the Ohio State main campus and is loosing out on scholarship money or scholarships, which because of the “fairness doctrine” is typically applied from some strict matrix that says 3.5 and above gets this much money, 3.25 gets this much money. Never mind that many of the kids that can’t cut it at his school and literally are failing out and go back to public schools and are at the top of their class and in turn have been offered scholarships and money. Unbelievable. Again, I’m not piling on but your S is a perfect example there’s got to be some better way to examine or know if these kids are going to be succesful at the college level and use the limited amounts of money on the ones that have proven in an academically rigorous sense that they deserve it.</p>
<p>McKDad, there’s no way to know at this point if your kid is going to be successful at the college level either. </p>
<p>Many a high achieving hs kid bombs out of college also. Just saying - don’t ever be the one saying, “My kid would never do that” - next thing you know, they are…</p>
<p>Best thing to do is hope and pray, and if they do well think, “There but for the grace of God go I.”</p>
<p>Heck, our kids have the potential to surprise us (for good or bad) at any point (not only 1st semester). My S has reassured me time & again that he will graduate this term. I checked the website that shows how the student is doing toward meeting grad requirements and find that he needs to go talk to the counselor to be sure he says matches what the university’s computer says. Right now, they are VERY different! I’m hoping he will straighten this out immediately, since he has several job offers riding on getting these glitches resolved. Kids–there but for the grace of God, indeed!</p>
<p>I know several friends whose kids didn’t quite graduate as scheduled, tho everyone flew up for it. Pretty upsetting. In one instance, the student was allowed to walk with his class & take one more semester to finish his credits. In the other instance, the student was forbidden from walking with his class, even tho he only needed 1 more class.</p>
<p>While Ohio State might look strictly at numbers (tests, grades, class rank) for admission and merit aid, it seems odd that if your kid goes to a top prep school in the area that the OSU doesn’t recognize the caliber of college preparedness. We don’t have class rank, but I will say the reputation of the academics seems to trump higher stats from other schools so that B+/ A- students gain entrance to some of the most selective schools in the country. But I will also add that Algebra II is never college level. :)</p>
<p>But here’s something to ponder. How will your son handle so much unstructured time at college where there are no mandatory study halls or tedious homework that seems to monopolize so much of his time (outside of athletics)? And too… will he swim at college? Mostly that’s why I think kids don’t succeed. It’s not the work load, it’s the organization or lack thereof of their time. Certainly, there are cases of kids getting into trouble in other ways. But most freshman issues come from a lack of managing the excess time vs the actual work load of classes. You no longer get points for participation in class, homework and quizzes etc and it’s very easy to not stay in the habit of doing daily work. And then if you have but a midterm a final and maybe a paper on which your entire grade is based — well, it could be a hard pill to swallow if you bomb even one of those things even with the best of effort and intention.</p>
<p>I also HUGELY agree with ag54. The minute you say, “my child would never…”, he surely will.</p>
<p>(small disclaimer: I have however said, he better not … or I will kill him.)</p>
<p>ag54…I couldn’t have said it better. If someone had told me that my son (S1) would have done as poorly as he did during his Freshman year I would never have believed it. (I certainly wish someone COULD have–it would have saved me/us a lot of heartache and $$). As I get S2 ready to go off to college I can’t help but think I’m much more concerned and guarded, even though he is a much different kid from his brother, with this one. I know it can, and does, happen to many kids that “should” have done better.</p>
<p>McKdad, I hope you never have to experience what many of us on this thread did “but for the grace of God…” .</p>
<p>I want to share this as the younger sibling of a first-semester-failure. Part of the reason my parents were so hesitant to allow me to go to a 4 year college was because my sister flunked out her first semester and they were terrified I would fail, too. I went to a community college for financial reasons, but it was no secret my parents doubted me in light of what my sister did, and that was a contributor too. Though it is definitely important to take the lessons learned from kid 1 and apply them to kid 2, remember to keep the comparisons to yourselves. They hurt.</p>
<p>Yes, it IS unfair to compare our kids with anything but themselves, but hard to stop. There is a lot to be gained from CC, especially the financial savings, but not necessarily the road most kids would prefer. Glad things are working out for you, TwistedxKiss.</p>
<p>There are Us that look STRICTLY at class standing, GPA & standardized scores in deciding who gets included in merit aid. Because S had relatively low rank (50%), excellent scores and GPA of about 3.5 or so, he didn’t even apply to such schools (since merit aid would really help our family). He focused most of his apps on schools known for good merit aid, based on stats similar to his & it worked out for us.</p>