My daughter’s school (Messiah) also had classes today.
My kid is coming home next weekend. We told him he could fly home one weekend in September. He’s such an introvert, I think he’ll need a weekend home periodically to decompress. He hasn’t really made any friends yet, but he does get along with his roommate and he’s started going to a Christian fellowship group, so I really hope he can make some connections. I text him everyday and we FaceTime on Sundays, so I feel like we’re up to date as much as we can be. He does not post on social media, I wish he would! I did ask for a selfie on the first day of school. It was clearly his first selfie, lol. Most stoic expression I’ve ever seen, though he did manage to frame his shot nicely with the Berkeley campanile in the background.
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Bowdoin had classes and UMD didn’t.
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I have a child at Kenyon and they have class on Labor Day as well.
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There is a family weekend in October, with a long weekend that starts the following Wednesday. She is 5 hours away, not sure what we’ll do. Not planning to go family weekend, all the hotels were already booked in July.
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Duke did not give LD off until this year! But D21 is in Italy on study abroad so….classes are in session for her anyway!
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The twins were both home Friday-Monday for the long weekend and now back at their respective campuses. House is quiet again. Twin 2 won’t be back home until mid October, he has plans with his local friends here for the big high school rival football game. Twin 1 said he won’t be back for a few weeks (he’s the local’ish one) he wants to stay on campus for awhile. My husband and I are going to Türkiye the last week of September for my birthday/our early 25th anniversary…Twin 1 is going to drop us off at the airport and stay at home with the cat for the weekend; one of the twins’ friends is going to help out with feeding and house check duties for the rest of the time we’re away.
This empty nesting thing is strange lol.
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Muhlenberg always had class on Labor Day, but Mississippi State, North Texas, and all of the Universities of Alaska have it off.
I’m seeing a private-public tendency in this and other responses, I think, in that the default is to have it off, but if there are classes that day it’s at privates.
My S had classes at Whitman today, too. (With their first day of classes last Tuesday, feels like it makes sense to go straight through this week.)
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I am honestly shocked there are classes today! USC has the day off.
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When I worked at a SLAC, we had classes on Labor Day. We were told that it was for 2 reasons. 1) If students go home on Labor Day, it’s bad timing because some freshman get cold feet and choose to never come back. Even a few of these make a big difference to a SLAC. 2) Having a Monday off really screws up classes that have lab components (as someone who taught labs this is absolutely true). Labs are less often held on Fridays, so they aren’t as likely to get messed up. I disliked having class on Labor Day but I understood the reasons and accepted it.
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Both D20 and D23 had classes at their SLACs today. D20 also had to work.
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I think at some colleges, first-semester students are not allowed to rush, precisely to avoid creating even more distressing scenarios when some of these kids are just trying to adjust to a completely new living scenario - and after already having undergone an intense application/selection process just to get admitted to college “x” in the first place.
I’m sorry for the rough start.
But, isn’t that essentially the definition of rushing and Greek?
Being judged (in the worst case, harassed) by a bunch of other teenagers based on arbitrary and superficial criteria, and then being placed in a “cast system” based on financial ability to repeatedly satisfy whatever dress code(s), and other rules, that are expressly intended to create artificial stratification and thus keep everyone in “their” place?
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Yeah but tell us what you really think 
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Ok, while I still think students deserve a break, this seems like a valid reason to me. I can understand how LD attrition could impact a small college.
Anecdotally, our hs GC told us that approximately 50% of kids who go to college oos transfer home to the state flagship within a year. I know many parents who, despite near daily tearful phone calls, forced their kids to stay at their oos colleges with mixed results; some of those kids graduated but some of them dropped out.
One of the more interesting examples I can think of is a young man who dropped out of Berkeley to take a job as a guide in Patagonia. That didn’t sound so bad to me but his parents were quite upset.
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Elon had classes on Labor Day as well. I was surprised!
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50%!! Wow that’s high. Around here OOSis common (more than half of the graduating class at the private schools and big public magnet)and the only ones who come back in-state are the ones who went to an oos school because they didn’t get into UVA or other popular instate schools, so they transfer on purpose after a year. So less than 10% and it’s a preplanned transfer.
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For the families I know, it’s the expectation gap. Living elsewhere (usually the Northeast) doesn’t match the fantasy. Kids who stay in the mountain west or go further west (e.g. Oregon, California) tend to stay.
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we’ve had one transfer out of 4 so far… . . big city school back to midwest state school. Same kid ended up on east coast for her masters, but then took a job in colorado. Where i wish i was sometimes!!
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We joke that it’s easy to go west and chill out, harder to go east and ramp up.
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