<p>Jym:</p>
<p>The college which invited Ward Churchill was Hamilton.</p>
<p>Thanks marite-
Colagate and Hamilton are so close to each other-- I got them mixed up :) But at any rate-- I've figured out what to "burn" in protest. It's insulation! We live in a world of Enrons and Worldcomms. Accountability is essential. Insulating the school and its administration isn't a great plan. Contact with the school is encouraged when you are a prospective parent, but shut off when you are the parent of a freshman? There are better ways to handle it. There should be a way to direct calls if and when they need to be made-- not just shut them down.</p>
<p>Mind you- I am not a big advocate for babying our children. I have 2 very independent kids, and am proud of that. I just believe there are a lot of individual differences we should be mindful of- and not just propose cutting them loose. What about a kid with a history of social isolation, anxiety, depression, eating disorder, substance abuse, etc. If there is not a system in place to help these kids, they will run into trouble. The support system should be set up in advance, so as to minimize the need for call to the school later.</p>
<p>Jym - good comments. BTW, I am not too upset with my son's school - it's a great school and a I believe they are paying attention to what is happening in their dorms (and I trust them to do that), not sure about their frats. At orientation they tried to delineate when parents should call and when they shouldn't and they were not way out of line to my way of thinking. They also demonstrated through skits how they think parents should respond to student complaints home. Mostly, I was in agreement. But, there was a heavy attitude of butt out that pervaded the entire day of orientation. I resented that much of orientation was geared to this. They noted not having enough faculty in highly enrolled majors, kids frequently being closed out of classes, etc., and said these were examples of things that parents shouldn't be concerned about - just life. Perhaps that is true but that seems to me to be getting to the core of why my kid is there and it was a bit concerning as students in the student meeting (older students) confirmed that it could take over a year to get into a required course or a course needed as a pre-requisite to another necessary course - indeed it was a problem on campus. That may be life.....but that is something that consumers/parents might be interested in if it means that your son or daughter is going to be sticking around for another year's tuition.......! Accountability - who made the decision to not hire more faculty for overenrolled majors.....or better yet, how did they make that decision and should administration be accountable. </p>
<p>Re: current level of comfort in dorms. Well, we have all raised our comfort level since the 60s, haven't we? Why should the dorm still function as it would have in the 60s? Surely sharing a room if you haven't done so before seems like a reduction in comfort to students today - and you want to take away the 350 thread sheets???? LOL.</p>
<p>jym - definitely - I agree with your comments above. I wanted to raise the issue of suicide, anorexia, depression, etc. - these are not uncommon concerns on campuses today - someone needs to have their finger on the pulse of the living community....</p>
<p>Two minor points: despite what the article says, Colgate DID give freshmen parents a list of administrators numbers at registration last week (on a little card, which I discarded) ... and President Chopp is all too familiar with student protests (last spring's large student demonstration protesting the college's takeover of fraternity buildings).</p>
<p>jym:</p>
<p>Purely by coincidence, I just dropped my D off for Freshman Orientation at Colgate last week. I think the quoted portion of the article that started this thread was somewhat misleading. What was said was something I think you might agree with:</p>
<p>It's not, they claim, that Colgate is abandoning "customer service" for parents, but rather that it is making a higher priority of creating independent students. The article said Colgate believed that parental over-involvement undermines students' ability to solve problems themselves and that problem solving should be part of a college education, like learning to research or think for themselves.</p>
<p>Dean Weinberg said there should be a time when children go from living in their parents house to becoming a functioning, autonomous person. He assured parents that Colgate has resources to help students. But unless there's a safety risk, students are encouraged to seek out those resources themselves. </p>
<p>Ir will be interesting to see how Colgate's new Residential Life Initiative Plan turns out. It involves amongst other things weekly student dorm meetings and programs starting in Freshman year and going throughout the four years, to encourage these and related goals. On the other hand it also involves taking over and regulating Frat houses in ways thought by many to be quite over involved and even paternalistic.</p>
<p>Now of course this could all just be spin, to cut off parental intervention at the pass, and to put the lid on Fraternity drinking and rowdyness. But....judging from the things I've seen and heard from parents at my D's school up to now, and to be honest, my own impulses to fix and smooth life for my kids, which sometimes have to be suppressed with great difficulty, I think those are good and much needed goals.</p>
<p>BTW, Colgate did give out Administrators numbers at orientation, and many of them are also on the Welcome 2009 Student part of the website. Plus there were representatives all over campus to help with things, answer questions, students to help carry and move in. There were even friendly computer nerds dispatched to all the dorms to help get all the students computers hooked up to the network. Now, reading the article, I wish I had attended the Parents Convocation on Thursday, but instead I took a walk into Hamilton with my D to check out the stores and pick up textbooks.</p>
<p>Oh lord, now Yahoo! news has picked up the article.
<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050828/ap_on_re_us/college_helicopter_parents%5B/url%5D">http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050828/ap_on_re_us/college_helicopter_parents</a></p>
<p>I'm amazed at how much discussion this issue has generated. I don't think it's that big of a deal. Every kid is different, and every family has different dynamics. As long as the parents aren't completely out of control, I'm not going to second guess how involved they are.</p>
<p>The article is also in my local Long Island newspaper, Newsday. It's an AP piece which I'm sure is appearing all over. (So far, though it hasn't appeared in the "In the News" section of the Colgate website, which usually reprints almost anything which even mentions the school). At first I thought the author was a Colgate parent, but I can't find that last name in the student directory.</p>
<p>In the Colgate girls case it was the student who was requesting help from her parents- if she didn' t call her parents up everyday- they would have had no idea about her difficulities getting the "right" sort of dorm mates.</p>
<p>Ironically my D school which expects students to behave like adults did have was was essentially a dorm mother in her soph & jr yr dorm. While the Dorms have HAs ( graduates) and RAs ( resident student advisors), her dorm also had a very sweet woman who was the guardian angel. She was the housekeeper, but she also made them fresh coffee, cookies and took students to the airport who missed the shuttle. She was usually around someplace and up for a chat and knew the students well enough to be able to make suggestions when a peer might not. I will miss her this year now that my D is in an townhouse instead of the dorms- she is great :)</p>