Do I allow my daughter to go to the home of Ivy alumnus to be interviewed?

Parents Forum
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<p>“In talking with my daughter about this, she said that her experience with her professors (male and female) is that when they meet with one student alone in their office, the door is always left ajar, never completely closed. To me, that’s just smart of the professor who is protecting themself as well”</p>

<p>What difference does it make if the door is open if there’s no one else around? Some professors have offices in very private locations. As I mentioned, I recently was in 2 different male professors’ offices during the day. No one else was around. If they had wanted to rape me, it would have been easy whether or not the door was open.</p>

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<p>Not only do I think the risk of any sort of crime at a college interviewer’s home is extremely low, it doesn’t differ much from the chance of it happening if meeting the interviewer elsewhere. You could meet at Starbucks and then after the interview, be lured. You could meet in a private office and advances could be made.</p>

<p>But this is not the same as meeting a stranger off the street. This person has signed on to conduct an interview that is on record. It would be an odd circumstance for an adult to use this situation for a crime. </p>

<p>Your kids are at greater risk if alone with a fellow student in an unsupervised home or car, or simply walking home from school. Or in college if in a dorm room or common room alone with a student your kid doesn’t know. And so on.</p>

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<p>“What difference does it make if the door is open if there’s no one else around? Some professors have offices in very private locations.”</p>

<p>The university my daughter attends has a severe shortage of office space so this is not the case where my daughter is; some offices actually accomodate more than one faculty member.</p>

<p>Also, several times now, posters have commented that nobody has come up with an example of an inappropriate interviewer. Actually there was one example earlier amongst the thread where a male student was offered alcohol during an interview in a home. This thread has way too many pages now to go back and find it but I remember reading it fwiw.</p>

<p>I think at this point nobody is going to change their minds on the issue; as pointed out, it’s a matter of parental permissivenss and what you’re comfortable with.</p>

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<p>Since some find it bad parenting to put their child “at risk” of attending a college interview at the alumni’s home…</p>

<p>Do some of you who fall in that line of thinking allow your kids to:</p>

<p>Babysit at someone’s home?</p>

<p>Get a ride home with the babysitting family’s dad at the end of the evening?</p>

<p>Stay after school to meet with a teacher alone in a classroom? </p>

<p>Walk home from school on a road that is not frequented by pedestrians?</p>

<p>Go over a friend’s house if the parent is not home? </p>

<p>Get a ride from a classmate’s parent? </p>

<p>Go alone in their own car to this or that public place and park in a parking lot…mall, whatever, and walk around unaccompanied? </p>

<p>Just wonderin’. Stuff can happen in all these situations. In fact, it is more likely than in a college interview that is scheduled, on record, parent knows where you are, etc.</p>

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<p>Yes, I agree that there was one example of an inappropriate interviewer mentioned on this thread.</p>

<p>“The university my daughter attends has a severe shortage of office space so this is not the case where my daughter is; some offices actually accomodate more than one faculty member.”</p>

<p>That was the case at the university where I used to work. In fact, I had such an office my first year at the university. However, if a faculty member was hell bent on behaving inappropriately with students in their office, it still would have been easy to do so because there always would be some times in which a faculty member knew an office would be empty. </p>

<p>Any person hell bent on rape or molestation could find a way of doing so even in a place that’s supposed to be safe. As I mentioned before, in a nearby university, a student was raped by a stranger in the university library during its regular hours.</p>

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<p>If the interviewer offered alcohol (inappropriate for sure), how did the situation really differ than compared to letting your kid over a friend’s house to hang out or have dinner with the family? That could have happened in that situation too (more likely in fact) and do you not allow your kid to go to other kids’ houses?</p>

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<p>While I understand the concern (something in my day that would rarely come up, but with all the abuse scandals in the headlines by trusted people, something unfortunately common today) I would say as a parent that it is okay.</p>

<p>Alumni in my day routinely, if they didn’t want to come to your home, did the interviews where they lived, and I had an older sister who did plenty of them. I agree with others, while there is never a 100% guarantee that things turn out allright (as someone else pointed out, same for the interviewer as well as the interviewee) this isn’t the same as meeting someone you contacted on the internet or the like.</p>

<p>People who do the interviews are generally pretty well known people, they don’t just call up some alum out of the blue and say “hey, wanna interview prospective applicants?”. From what I know of the way these work, usually the people doing the interviews are active in the Alumni association, have done these plenty of times probably, and so are not unknowns. As someone else pointed out, most of them will probably be of an age where they are married, have kids, etc, usually they don’t get 20 something year old unknowns to do it (not to reflect on 20 somethings, or say they couldn’t do a good interview, just saying that people tend to get involved in Alumni associations when they are older, settled, etc). </p>

<p>I agree with others, let your daughter do it, but if you are uncomfortable, it is okay to drop her off at the place, meet the person, and ask him/her when she will be done, so you can be there to pick her up.</p>

<p>It isn’t the fact that this person graduated from an Ivy league school or any school that makes me think she will be safe (pedophiles and creeps graduate from every school, they exist) it is that a pedophile or molestor is not likely to volunteer as a interviewee with that in mind, they are too well known, and the odds of getting caught are huge. Generally pedophiles either go for kids they don’t know in anonymous places (like the playground, etc), or they are people in position of authority who over a period of time, gain the kids trust and figure they can make the kid keep quiet (teachers, clergy, etc)…someone like a single instance interviewer doesn’t have either element, the parent knows the child is there, they don’t know the child, so the likelyhood if they tried anything would be getting busted…</p>

<p>Obviously, if you are still uncomfortable it is your right as a parent to ask if it could be done in a public place, you are still the parent, but I also think you don’t have that much to worry about in this case.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure if I’m exactly the respondent you want because I would have allowed my daughter to do the in-home interview (although both she and I would have been uncomfortable with the situation). In real life, we never encountered that situation because she was admitted to her ED school, and it was Cornell.</p>

<p>As a teenager, I gave up babysitting after too many rides home from intoxicated parents, some of whom made sexually suggestive comments. In light of my own experience, if either of my kids had wanted to babysit (which they did not), I would have offered to pick them up.</p>

<p>Yes, my kids stayed after school to meet with teachers alone, but the situation was rarely private, and teachers in our school system are concerned beyond paranoia about the kind of accusations we’re discussing on this thread. </p>

<p>My daughter, who is currently in college, avoids walking to her off-campus apartment on a road that tends to be deserted. She takes a different route even though the other route is longer. I did not tell her to do this; it was her idea.</p>

<p>Once they reached middle school age, my kids made their own judgments about going to specific friends’ houses when parents were not home. In some instances, they wouldn’t do it because they were uncomfortable about what went on there. My son, for example, stopped visiting a friend at his home because the friend and his sister used illegal drugs in the house when parents were not around. He would still meet this friend in public places or go with him to school events, but he would not go to the friend’s home. I remember having the opposite problem with a friend when I was in junior high. I would go to her home, but I would not go out in public with her because she shoplifted. </p>

<p>My kids have gotten rides from classmates’ parents, but there have been situations where they refused to do so a second time. In one case, my son, who was in elementary school, had to ride home on his classmate’s lap because the car was a two-seater. Neither child was able to wear a seat belt in that situation. He was horrified and asked never to ride with that parent again. I agreed.</p>

<p>Go to malls and similar places alone? Yes, and of course there is some risk, but this is a situation that’s almost impossible to avoid.</p>

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<p>OK–I will say it–life is full of risk, every day and every where. Each person develops his or her own risk assessment and tolerance level. That’s why one person’s mole hill is another person’s Mt Olympus.</p>

<p>As a recent student poster stated (and I’ve made no attempt to verify the stat), college females have a 1 in 4 probability of being raped. But, as I understand it, the percentage of college females to college males is going up, as is the total number of females attending college. I am not aware of any female refusing to go to college for fear of rape. I can conceive that there might be, but the point is females choose to attend college with this risk.</p>

<p>The OP and her daughter have already expressed concerns over (1) an in-home interview with a male alum interviewer (I guess due to possible sexual assault) and (2) that objecting to, or trying to change, the venue might negatively impact the daughter’s chances for admission. </p>

<p>I have been in this thread for a long time and do not recall anyone indicating a high probability of an actual sexual assault or even improper conduct from a male alum interviewer. Similarly, there has been more than one or two interviewers (past and present) who admit they would be put off by the implication that they were a threat to the female applicant. Then there are those who seem to have some actual experience who say a negative interview can cause the applicant a problem and some who say the interviewer’s input is “no biggie” (how they would know that is a little hard to figure out). </p>

<p>And there is the group who suggest the daughter do a modified “white lie” and when asking for a venue shift put it all off on Mom. </p>

<p>OP– Seems the overall consensus is that there is pretty dang low risk of “bad stuff” from either choice, but the ultimate determination of which risk to assume is for the person directly involved and thanks for letting your daughter decide. Let us know what her decision is.</p>

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<p>Savvy female college students can greatly reduce this risk by taking some basic precautions – such as not getting intoxicated and not walking alone late at night. </p>

<p>As far as I can tell, there is nothing a young person can do to mitigate whatever risks might be present in the home-interview situation.</p>

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<p>Actually, the 1 in 4 probability would include the females who did take those precautions. What you don’t know is to what extent the precautions worked.</p>

<p>Don’t drink. Carry Mace/pepper spray/noise panic buttons. Pre-programmed cell phone to Mom waiting down the street. Tell interviewer that you had to schedule a ride and that they will be back to get you.</p>

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<p>Something I just thought of, reading some of the other posts, and that is we have to look at relative risks. Frankly, the odds of getting molested or raped in situations like we are talking about in general are a lot more likely with people the victim knows then a stranger like an interview like this (I am leaving out situational rapes, like on a deserted street at night, getting kidnapped, etc), I believe the stats bear that out. When I read about cases of rape or molestation, a lot of the time it is someone the victim and their family knows, whether a clergy member, teacher, parent of another child, relative, whatever…</p>

<p>I am saddened that we have come to the point where people are always suspicious, and sadly the media has a large role in this, they have blown a lot of this out of proportion. Whether it is molestation or rape, or false cries of sexual impropriety, I am hearing views that don’t fit the real facts, at least as I think I know them. It was like the hysteria about missing kids, there were all these numbers thrown around, about 57,000 kids disappear each year, and people were crying it was an epidemic, etc. What the media doesn’t report is that a huge proportion of those were kids taken by a relative in a custody dispute, fathers or mothers grabbing the kid from the legal guardian and so forth. An FBI agent made a good comment about that back when the ‘milk carton wars’ were raging, he said if 57,000 kids a year were disappearing, he meant kidnapped, etc, not custodial disputes, he made the point that 57,000 soldiers died in the Vietnam war, and almost everyone knew of someone or knew of someone who had someone die there…yet how many people know directly or indirectly someone who has lost a child like this?</p>

<p>Yes, it is very easy to see where for example a male interviewer would think a female candidate (or a male one, for that matter) might cry harassment to try and blackmail the school into admitting them (the creep you had me interview did X, better let me in, or I will tell) but frankly the odds of that are pretty small, because unless someone is brain dead, it isn’t going to work, so what would he/she gain by crying that? Usually when people cry false harassment, it is with some goal in mind, but what would they get? If they sue the school, they would lose, since interviewers are volunteers, and how much could they get out of the volunteer? In some ways the idea of sexual predators in every corner reminds me of cultures where they lock women away in Burqhas, refuse to alllow them to drive or be alone with any male but a relative and the like, and to me that is troubling, it is in the cause of trying to protect from real harm causing a much worse one. </p>

<p>And in my opinion if you are worried about inappropriate behavior in this case, what are you going to do when your child goes to college? One of the facts about molestation and such it often comes in areas where someone has power over another (for example, a boss with quid pro quo over a subordinate), and it usually an ongoing relationship, not a single incident. Looking at that, then using the same logic, a student if meeting with a professor or administrator at the school better take someone else with them every time they meet, because that is a situation more fraught then a single interview, statistically and otherwise.</p>

<p>I think chances are people have probably exposed their kids to a lot more risk growing up then they realize and nothing happened, and they balk at something relatively safe. Lot of people let very young children go to the bathroom by themselves in public places, for example a lot of public bathrooms don’t allow opposite sex kids to go to the restroom with a parent beyond a certain age), they send kids away to sleep away camps at a young age, travel sports teams, and the like, which statistically have a larger chance of the kid getting molested…and do so without really thinking about that. I have a good friend, an older women who raised 4 kids herself, and a therapist, and one of the things she told me when we had our son was to never send him to sleepaway camp as a child, don’t let him go to the bathroom by himself until he was older, and the reason she told us that was because her practice had a lot of adults that as kids had been molested in those situations…</p>

<p>In the end it comes down to personal comfort levels and the like, and if in the end if that arrangement doesn’t work, either try to re-arrange it with the interviewer, try to get another interview of forgo the interview. Interviews are optional, but plenty of people get into colleges without one, it is simply one part of the admissions process, and a voluntary one.</p>

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<p>I’d really like to hear someone who has these concerns answer the question of what risk they are talking about–forcibly assaulting the interviewee OR simply suggesting/attempting inappropriate things such as serving alchohol or insinuating a quid pro quo, or making a direct advance. </p>

<p>Because if it is the latter possibility I honestly don’t see what the huge fear is. I have two daughters, the youngest, 17, has had several interviews already (no not in a home, but her friends have) and more to come. If she or her 19-year-old sister were ever put in a position in which an authoritative person made a pass at them, I would expect them to react by cutting (him) off and getting away as soon as possible. They’d be disgusted and shocked for a little while, but you can bet that a year later we’d be laughing about it. And I can even say I’d probably chalk it up to a learning experience. </p>

<p>Now if you want to suggest the danger is in physical force, well the alum better have a pretty good set up to carry that off with all the circumstantial and physical evidence that would be left behind. I just think the risk is virtually non-existent.</p>

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<p>First of all, concerned that the interviewer is a sex offender? Thank God for Megan’s Law, you can look up the sex offenders in your area. This is a good thing if you don’t trust the University to vet interviewers. This is a good thing if you can’t Google. This is a good thing when you don’t have the wherewithall to ask around about the person. (Yes, we live in Los Angeles. I have yet to ask about someone, usually a guy that my girls are dating who didn’t know the parents/grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins.) So, please don’t whine and say that you can’t check someone out. </p>

<p>Why should someone come to the house? Well, my husband has interviewed in his office. It has worked, but neither of them were as relaxed because even the “Hold all calls.” can’t always work. …but then again…let’s see how an after hours meeting at the office would be interperted. Oh, and let’s just say that the interviewer is a business school grad, as is the applicant to the same school. Nice to see the house, nice to see how the schooling paid off.</p>

<p>In one case my husband saw the name of an applicant which was unusual. Turns out the grandfather was an artist and I have two of grandpa’s works. Husband invited the young lady to the house for the interview…and to see the art. Yes, we invited the father as well. They came separately and discussed the pieces…and then the father left. Was he checking us out? Maybe. Or perhaps the fact that he, the father choked up when he saw one piece was his reason for coming.</p>

<p>And as to why my husband, and several of our friends interview? Because WE HAVE CHILDREN who applied to college. We would want them to have the same advantage/curtesy shown to our kids. And no, our kids didn’t apply to husband’s school.</p>

<p>And as for the weight of the interview? Husband interviewed a kid from a major prep school here. Perfect EVERYTHING, no kidding. Trouble was he couldn’t make eye contact (husband dismissed that as nerves). But when asked why he wanted to go to my husband’s alma mater, and a few others kid said, “I’ve always wanted to go to school in the countryside. I need quiet.” Problem: His choices were in NYC, Philadelphia, and Boston. He applied to names, not to schools. He didn’t get into my husband’s alma mater.</p>

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<p>I agree with everything that musicprnt wrote. I think for those of you who are uncomfortable with the perceived “risk” of letting your kid attend a college interview at an alum’s house…you likely have let your kid do these other things mentioned that have a greater risk of something negative happening, but didn’t necessarily think twice. Some say they let their kids over friends’ houses with no adult at home. Or their kid rode in a car with a friend’s parent and so on. Opportunities exist in these situations too, greater than in an interview. As well, situations in college WILL put your kids in contact with strangers one on one. It just is the way it will be. The college interview is set up in a way that the stranger was vetted and the situation is on record. A weird situation for anyone to try anything, in my view. </p>

<p>In any case, if you are uncomfortable with alum interviews at homes or wherever (risks exist just as much at other locations!)…you can decline them or request a change of venue. It is a choice. Like anything else.</p>

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<p>Here’s one…my 23 year old who is at MIT, has taken a job part time doing one to one tutoring with underprivleged children as enrichment funded by a government program (this is a paid job). She will be going into these strangers’ homes. I never thought twice about this. Based on this thread, I must be a bad parent “allowing” her to go into strangers’ homes where anything can happen to her, even though this is all lined up through an agency (much like a college interview is lined up and on record).</p>

<p>Both the alum interview and the tutoring in private homes are not equivalent to some random stranger saying, “come over to my house.” Both are lined up through a school or organization where the organization knows these meetings are taking place. In the case of the college interview, the parent is also aware of the time/place of the meeting. The parent may even be the driver. I just don’t see these situations in the same light as stranger danger that is random.</p>

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<p>IMO, this thread is testimony to how hard it is to recover after the loss of one child and give situation-appropriate freedoms to the remaining siblings. Yet somehow, people whose children have died in car crashes, or been murdered as a pizza delivery person, manage to eventually find some way to let the next ones drive or perhaps take a different job with night hours. Risk assessment statistics and probability can help inform a decision, but the journey of the heart to let the next one go must be very hard indeed after the untimely loss of an older child.</p>

<p>Also some people are bizarrely restrictive on their children without such a history, which makes all the back-and-forth here, and the sociology of a fear-ridden parenting style, a much larger phenomenon. So to me it seems that posters in this thread understand they’re talking beyond and around this OP’s unique situation, meanwhile exploring the general issues involved. Whether discussing alumni interview policy or protection against campus date rape, nobody’s being mean on the OP for her unique set of thoughts.</p>

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<p>I don’t think anymore that a discussion of rational risk assessment and mitigation has anything to do with this issue. It seems that with some parents, it’s more of an honor thing: my daughter may not meet in private with an unrelated adult male. Some people remember to dress it up in more gender-neutral terms, but as far as I can tell it’s always that pattern. It’s not evidence-based; there’s no evidence to support it. It’s cultural.</p>

<p>(It’s also different from rational risk mitigation concerns on the part of institutions and interviewers, who may want to avoid meeting young people who may not share their values in their homes.)</p>

<p>It’s just about 180-degrees from how I live. It’s insulting to me (an unrelated adult male interviewer); it’s insulting to the girls involved (I don’t think too many 17-year-olds are incompetent to deal with an unwanted advance, in the very unlikely event that happened). It denigrates what I view as a sign of friendship and respect (meeting with an adult in his home). It denigrates the institutions I care about. (An earlier poster asked, “Is Harvard, Yale, or Princeton worth an interview in these circumstances?”, to which my answer is, “Are you nuts? Of course!”) It coarsens society in general, by insisting that treating strangers as potential sex offenders is the norm.</p>

<p>But it is what it is. Interviewers who use their homes for interviews should be sensitive to the fact that some students – and more of their parents – may be uncomfortable with that location, and that they probably don’t mean that to be as insulting and disrespectful as it sounds. Parents and students who object to in-home interviews should remember that their position is not the universal norm and may be viewed as hostile, and that they are asking for accommodation of an idiosyncrasy.</p>

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<p>I agree with p3t. I have GREAT compassion for the OP (though the thread has gone off into a larger discussion beyond her situation). I can’t fathom the loss of a child but I am sure it impacts other decisions and it is harder to let go or allow this or that in an effort to be protective of remaining children. While I have not experienced that to know it, I have experienced having a child who is precariously hanging on to machines in ICU after suffering a major car crash. Even so, I am quite proud of myself (a mom who generally is nervous in fact) that just a few months later, I allowed my then 18 year old to drive 6000 miles to Alaska and have let her travel all over the world on her own. The child who was in the accident returned to driving once she recovered. I also allowed her, 6 months after the accident and then age 16 1/2, having grown up in a rural town where she had basically rarely ever been alone as one can’t walk anywhere and we drove her to everything (she got her license just 8 months before starting college at age 16 and so was driven everywhere as well) to then move to Manhattan to attend college. I have let my other kid go to Third World countries on her own. If I can do it, anyone can (if you knew how nervous I can get about the kids, let alone they grew up in a fairly sheltered little town).</p>

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<p>JHS…very thoughtful post. I agree. Really, this can’t be about risk assessment because logic would show that the risk of harm in an alumni interview is close to nil. So, it has to be these other issues you bring up. Everyone is entitled to do what they wish. I do find the hesitancy to do an alum interview at a home to be odd, but it would not be the first thing I have found odd about choices others make. :D</p>

<p>I also do not take kindly to the notion someone brought up that those who allow their kids to do these interviews are somehow indicative of bad parenting! Maybe it is different values or comfort levels but it surely has nothing to do with being a good or bad parent, in my opinion.</p>