REALLY need advice....

Parents Forum
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<p>Well, you may call me “uptight” but any kid who gets into a selective university will be able to learn the “skills” these idiot alums were presenting, without any help from the aging party boys. They seem to be trying to score “coolness” points with the kids which is beyond pathetic. Some people just can’t seem to get over their college selves and grow up, already.</p>

<p>To pull this at an event for incoming freshmen and their parents is simply reprehensible. These kids are underage by 2 to 3 years and whether you agree with the drinking laws in this country or not, encouraging them to break them is not acceptable.</p>

<p>I’d not condem what I’m sure is an excellent school because they graduated a few arrested development cases, but I wouldn’t hesitate to send a letter to the office of alumni affairs outlining the events of the day. I imagine they’d be grateful to know how their school is being represented and do a better job vetting the sponsors of future events.</p>

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<p>Well, I have heard of beer pong, even before D1 went up to Cornell. I am the one that posted in another thread that I equiped D1 with Bose cancellation earphones before she went up to school (and it was very handy when there was late night partying on her floor, and she had a prelim next day). Not uptight or stupid here because I have done most of things on the book that most college students shouldn´t do while I was in high school.</p>

<p>That being said, one has to wonder about a school that sanction a recruiting event like that. They are outrightly condoning extreme partying at the school (not having few beers at frat parties). We may all know underaged kids drink, even smoke some weeds, but it is another if we openly tell them it is acceptable and even encouraging them to do it. It was a bad judgement on the administration´s part, and if they could make a stupid judgement on an issue like this then what faith would I have in their judgement on my kid´s safety or education on campus.</p>

<p>One more point - Cornell has a reputation of working hard (play hard too), so slackers may not be attracted to a school like Cornell. If OP son´s school is openly telling applicants that it is a party school (just come on down), what kind of students do you think would be attracted to a school like that? Maybe OP´s son is a very mature, level headed young man, but the probability of him having to deal with a lot of partiers at that school would be a lot higher, and the chance of him finding kindred spirit would be a lot lower.</p>

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<p>I do think letting the admissions office know is a courtesy to them. I’d also be curious about their reaction. For my school, anyway, the local alumni groups have quite a bit of autonomy planning these things. It may be school-sanctioned, but completely out of the control of the administration.</p>

<p>It’s primarily the student who is doubting the suitability of the school over this, not the parent. If there’s substance-free housing available, maybe that’s the right choice for this student.</p>

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<p>BTW I still dont know what it is, but I’d be very concerned if I thought it might wreck a perfectly good ping pong table.</p>

<p>ok inappropriate and immature, but “reprehensible”??? as someone else posted they are going to find out soon enough anyway.</p>

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<p>monydad, you can find videos on youtube showing you the finer points of beer pong.
Ping pong table not necessary.</p>

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<p>I feel a strange disconnect when I read threads like this one about underage drinking at college. Don’t people realize how much drinking goes on at the vast majority of colleges? If you are concerned about it, the thing to do is look at colleges that have stricter enforcement of underage drinking laws. The information imparted by these alums would be relevant at most colleges.</p>

<p>Now, it is a problem that this particular college is having bozos host this welcoming picnics, and that may be worth complaining about if it’s scaring away students. But honestly, it’s awfully late to be worrying now about the drinking culture at a college–the time to find out about that is before you apply.</p>

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<p>I host events like this. I don’t tell the kids how to convert apple juice to hard cider, but might be intersted in the recipe.<br>
However, I do encourage younger alums and current students to come to talk to the incoming freshman. I encourge parents and older alums to answer the new anxious moms’ questions. I would be very upset if these conversations were going on at my house. Please do not think the University has anything to do with sanctioning this kind of conversation. The directive may have been to try to break the ice and answer the kids questions separately from the moms, but this is too far. Chalk it up to 30 year olds trying to reclaim their lost youth. </p>

<p>I thought you did need a ping-pong table for beer pong - I’ve heard of one enterprising young man painting his table a glow in the dark color so he could play beer pong in the dark.</p>

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<p>“…painting his table a glow in the dark color…”
Now THAT’s reprehensible.</p>

<p>ok maybe not…</p>

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<p>A little over a year ago, my D (entering freshman last year) was invited to a similar event at the home of an alumni, to welcome new students from the geographic area, and current students were invited.</p>

<p>Nothing like you describe happened, although she was unsettled because they had the event catered by a wonderful BBQ restaurant, and my D said NOBODY was eating (they were all vegetarians). My D LOVES BBQ but ate very daintily at the event because she didn’t want to stand out in a negative way.</p>

<p>Now that she’s been there a year, she knows that while there are vegetarians and a vegetarian dining hall, not everyone is vegetarian. But she came home concerned that she wasn’t going to get to eat meat for four years.</p>

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<p>The OP said that three other students (at least) were disgusted by the session and that the OP’s son and the other students are now questioning attending the school. monydad, it’s not the parents that are being “uptight”, it’s these students, who, horror of horrors, apparently aren’t looking forward to being hard-core partiers from the get-go. If the aim of this alumni session was to get the kids and families excited about the upcoming transition, they failed miserably. The problem isn’t that the kids were learning about beer pong. The problem was that the alumni managed to make at least three kids feel utterly miserable about their college choice, and alienate the families as future donors. Great job, alums! :rolleyes:</p>

<p>As a parent, the beer pong and fermentation session wouldn’t disturb me. But this bit would:</p>

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<p>How on earth is this “useful”?</p>

<p>One more thing: not all incoming freshmen might be too thrilled to be learning in a mixed gender group about how to download p*rn. If I was a female student hearing this from a male upperclassman, I’d be seriously creeped out.</p>

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This really bothered me more than the suggestions for gaining financial advantage or underage drinking. There is no way it even added to the “coolness” of the alumni. It was just a cruel comment by a bully with alumni credibility.</p>

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<p>I apologize I’ve not read the whole thread but wanted to add: I think it would be unfair to yourself (and son) to jump to conclusions that this ‘means anything’ regarding the school Well regarded public schools tend to be large and diverse bureaucracies involving tons of people and decisions. It is very easy for one bad staff member to majorly screw something up like this and I will bet big bucks that oversight was missing. Or more simply, an individual or small group, not a whole university, made a bad judgment call. </p>

<p>If it were me, I would be complaining and getting someone with actual authority- not someone who answers the phone or a low level staff person but rather say a Dean or the head of admissions- to tell you this was an one off occurrence that will not be repeated (or some such answer that reflects they get the issue). Ff the answer isn’t somethng like that, then I would start to draw conclusions!</p>

<p>To me the issue is not whether drinking and partying goes on big time (I’m sure it will, like on most college campuses!). But that is quite apart from adults working as volunteers, on behalf of the university, having this kind of discussion with incoming students. They are not speaking as individuals but as adults and representatives of the university in this context, and thus it is equivalent to the university sanctioning and encouraging this behavior. To me, that is the problem.</p>

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<p>“The problem was that the alumni managed to make at least three kids feel utterly miserable about their college choice, and alienate the families…”</p>

<p>ok good point. I concede.
Rat away.</p>

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<p>I would email the Alumni Office and cc the others. I always try to ask myself, “would I want to know if I were on the other end of the problem?” I cannot imagine a university in the country that would not want to know about this.</p>

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<p>I would just like to commend the OP for having such open communication with his or her son…many students would NEVER discuss this with parents. I think that you have stumbled on a great teachable moment and opportunity for discussion because these types of behaviors occur at all colleges, and your student needs the skills to make good decisions and stick with them.</p>

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<p>Hmmmm… what I think…
Snip snap snout, this tale’s told out.</p>

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<p>“I would just like to commend the OP for having such open communication with his or her son…many students would NEVER discuss this with parents. I think that you have stumbled on a great teachable moment and opportunity for discussion because these types of behaviors occur at all colleges, and your student needs the skills to make good decisions and stick with them”</p>

<p>Thank you. We are lucky. </p>

<p>It’s funny though. As I said earlier, I am not naive-partly because I work at a college and partly because husband and I were both partiers in college. Frankly, we somewhat expected our son to experiment with alcohol which lead to going way out of our way to create an open line of communication with him. The fact that he hasn’t is more of a byproduct of his type A personality than our parenting skills. For us, the teachable moments have been focused on making him aware that some element of an over-drinking culture is going to be an issue at any college and that he needs to choose his friends carefully, but that he also should be a little more tolerant of people. Maybe I should fill him in on my own experiences a little more. he would probably be shocked to know that I was frequently inebriated, but still managed to graduate with honors in a techy field. Right now, he thinks those two accomplishments are mutually exclusive and doesn’t have enough experience to know better. </p>

<p>Like most kids who are preparing for their upcoming “launch”, emotions are high and mixed and nerves are somewhat raw right now. We live in a very small town which means lots of peer pressure and fewer social groups than there are at a large high school. We just keep reminding son that there will be a LOT more people with similar interests and values at his college–which is considerably bigger than our whole town. </p>

<p>There were probably 30 students at this event and half were female. I wonder what those girls were thinking? </p>

<p>To the poster who indicated that we should have done our homework before son applied to this school. We visited, talked to freshmen, school administrators, etc. The school touts itself as having a 0 tolerance dry campus policy. From all that we could discern, there are legitmate efforts on the part of the adminstration and the campus police to enforce that policy–a few freshmen have been evicted from campus housing in the last two years as examples and it appears that most of the partying is in fact off campus. </p>

<p>Having had the day to cogitate about the experience I realize that my main gripe is that the alumni should be representing themselves as role models and university ambassadors to these incoming freshmen. Instead they behaved like older fraternity brothers and defintely did not represent the school in a good light. The worst part is that instead of allaying fears of all the students, which must have been the main goal of the event, they fed into the anxieties of at least 4 of them. </p>

<p>I didn’t get a chance to call today, but I will call both the director of the alumni office and the director of admissions tomorrow and indicate to them that I will be sending a letter to each of them as well as a few other administrators.</p>

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<p>I love the phrase “aging party boys.” Wow. That captures it. Boozer alums who are trying to relive college days by adopting the role of sophisticated, “in” advisor. Wanna bet they are also unemployed or underemployed? Gads. </p>

<p>By all means send out a shout to the college staff. Invite the Dean(s) to call your son and offer a different view of the school. Assure son that (unless the school is incredibly teeny) that there will be a wide range of people attending – and that a few drunken louts are no different than what he knew of high school (where there are, also, a wide range of personalities). </p>

<p>Ugh. So sorry your family had this experience!</p>

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<p>Did you name the school, if so I missed it. Was it Michigan? S had that experience (which we were definitely not expecting) at a program for kids accepted to the honors program there. If alarm bells are going off, my advice is to consider other options. One of my kids had a terrible experience at orientation (around the same issues) but we all ignored our gut feeling–turned out he had a miserable year and ended up transferring.</p>

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<p>I intentionally did not name the school, but it was not Michigan. Switching schools with one week left before we leave is not an option at this point, and not in son’s best interest right now either. He assures me he does not want to change courses at this point, but even if he did we would not let him. As I said before, he is defintely Type A and somewhat of a homebody though he can be really outgoing in some situations. We’ve told him all along that we would be fine with him changing schools and/or majors, but that we would really want him to attend this, his first choice school, for at least two quarters before he makes any major decisions. He needs to make an educated/informed decision. One two hour experience at an out of state alumni picnic does not an entire college make. Or maybe it does. Two quarters will reveal the truth, me thinks.</p>