Compared to Middlebury, your parents first point is basically correct. The other two points are completely false – not even sort of correct.
My son was accepted at both schools (a couple years ago) and ended up attended neither, but we went to a lot of events and tours and talked to a lot of people and I am a research junkie.
First, about the two false ideas. Wes’ reputation with industry and graduate and professional programs is great and certainly at least on par with Midd. I would challenge your parents to find any objective measure that suggests it’s worse on those counts or that the student “outcomes” are materially different on average. Anecdotally, I’ll tell you that among my colleagues in NYC (in finance, banking, investment, VC and legal), they mostly recommended Wes when I chatted about where my son should accept when he was, at the time, focused on these two schools. The truth is any of these top-tier LAC’s are effectively on similar footing when it comes to industry and continuing education reputation and success. It’s a non-issue. Some do better in certain fields than others, but overall a wash.
As for academics, there’s nothing “non-traditional” about Wes’s approach, nor materially different than Midd’s. In fact, the opposite is true – Wes is a classic liberal arts education which has a tradition going back hundreds of years. So is Midd. Some people get confused that liberal arts is somehow not traditional when in fact most of the top universities have liberal arts curriculum approaches. I went to UCLA and it called itself a liberal arts school. Liberal arts doesn’t mean politically liberal and it doesn’t mean non-STEM. And even Wes’s claim to have no core requirements is mostly not true because most people want to pursue Honors in their majors as as soon as you do the college introduces a range of requirements that are the equivalent of distribution requirements like most other schools. If you want a truly no-requirement school, Brown is your best bet.
As for the drug scene and Wes’s tolerant approach, yeah that’s most true. Wes has had a few high profile incidents that shine a spotlight on their drug issue more than their peers. All their peers have drug scenes, including Midd. But there’s no question that Wes is far more hands-off about it than Midd. Heck, Midd even banned the sale of perfectly legal caffeine drinks on campus because they felt they encouraged irresponsible behavior. In Midd’s parent orientation they talked at length about the ways they intervene and keep parents in the loop. Wes didn’t say a word. On that front, Wes has a different cultural mindset, for better or worse. They are fiercely proud of their student independence history and students sometimes defend it even when it’s at odds with their other belief systems.