<p>CountingDown,</p>
<p>Can your swim S at all? If he does, he most likely will pass the test.</p>
<p>It is my understanding that the swim test checks for rudimentary swimming skills such as staying afloat for a short period of time and being able to swim one lap without much difficulty. Maybe he can take the test in the wet suit.</p>
<p>Yep, MIT definitely still has a swim requirement. So does Reed. As for the stories of wet hair at graduation... most likely true. And both schools require four quarters of PE as well. Bravo for them.</p>
<p>I am curious as to why anyone would be worried about a college swim test? My kids must have had five or six swim tests at various places before they got to college. Summer camps required 400 yards AND ten minutes of treading water before the kids were allowed to take any water sports--canoeing, kayaking, etc. High schools (private, admittedly) required 100 yards and ten minutes. My father-in-law was required to pass a swim test about ten years ago as part of a consulting job (he was helicoptering to a North Sea oil rig... the test required him to simulate jumping out of a helicopter). </p>
<p>Since I think everyone should know how to swim, I have no problem with a college requiring either classes or a test.</p>
<p>(The hardest swim test I ever took required me to swim 400 yards in sweatpants (cotton) and sweatshirt (cotton) and sneakers before I could join the crew team. The next year, at MIT, I flipped my scull in the middle of the Charles--the first year MIT allowed women to do crew--and then swam the scull in, wearing sweatpants, etc., about 200 yards. By the time I got there, the entire men's team was watching me to see if I could pull it off. I climbed out the water, put the scull away, and then threw up for about 5 hours. That river water was foul.)</p>
<p>Reading this, I suddenly remembered that, in Talmud, there are 3 responsibilities identified for a parent to teach the child (actually there, father/son): to pray, to learn a trade, and how to swim.</p>
<p>Naturally, scholars wondered later why "how to swim" is there next to the other two biggies. Some thought it meant swimming literally, as a life-saving ability. Others saw "Swim" as a metaphor for teaching the child to stay afloat while coping with difficult or hostile environments during his lifetime. </p>
<p>My H protested once when S at age 18 months didn't move up from Diaper Dolphins I to Dophins II. Asking the swim teacher, she said that in order to be promoted, the kid had to close his mouth. She said, "watch him..." and indeed, S stood on the side of the pool narrating everyone else's activity, "There goes Jimmy, head in the water..." and when it was his own turn, still rambling on about his own moves as he jumped off the side of the pool. Teacher was right and it taught us a lot about questioning grades.</p>
<p>Youngest once jumped into deep end right in front of my eyes, almost drowning, at a school gathering. He said he saw the number "6" on the side of the pool (6 feet deep). After being rescued by four men at once who jumped in before I could, he said he was 6 so he thought that was the place for him.</p>
<p>dang, p3t, I knew you'd beat me to it citing the Talmud.;) Just as I was about to.....</p>
<p>To the poster who asked, neither my D nor I was worried about her passing any swim test. She just doesn't/didn't want to waste her precious college time doing that. Studies to do, people to meet, internships to do. The 4 yrs, with its academic responsibilities & social moments whizzes by in the blink of an eye. It is as true for f.a. students as for anyone else, btw, that they are aware of the cost of higher education & value that price for the reasons that any particular student applies. For my D, those reasons did not include swimming (been there, done that) when so much <em>new</em> stuff beckons. It's half over, already, unbelievably to us.</p>
<p>CountingDown: if your son could not stay warm with two wetsuits in 80 degree water, I would suggest that the wetsuits did not fit properly. Any water flow at all makes a wet suit useless. A wetsuit should fit so tightly that water is trapped inside the wetsuit and has a chance to warm up. </p>
<p>My son is also very lean, although an avid swimmer and SCUBA diver (he even has ice-diving certification). He uses a 7 mm wetsuit even in Hawaii (where I dive in a .5 mm skin). Your son will find swimming more bearable when he learns to swim well enough to keep his muscles warm. When I was on the swim team, most of the guys had no body fat (4% or less) but still preferred the water at 75 once they got going... and they'd last through a two-hour workout.</p>
<p>CountingDown, for cold bodies when swimming, have you had him checked for thyroid balance? If that's off, he might stay too cold very often, including underwater. I think any doctor can run a simple bloodtest for it, and if it's off, can be remedied very easily in most cases.</p>
<p>Epiphany, thirsty minds swim in the same channels...</p>
<p>Paying3tuitions....your story of your son at six brought back a memory of my younger child at 22 months old. While she had been in swim lessons, she could not yet swim on her own. I was at the pool at our local resort sports center. I was in the shallow end with my almost 4 year old who could swim. The younger one was on a lounge chair. She got up and started running and accidentally ran right into the pool's deep end, which was a distance from where I was standing in the shallow end. She did not have swimmies on her arms at the time as she wasn't swimming. In no time at all, a woman who was standing near that edge of the pool jumped in to retrieve my D (the woman was dressed in her tennis clothing). Nothing happened to my D other than crying from the shock but she was OK. As far as myself, I was a wreck. The what ifs....oy. I should not have let myself be in that situation but one thing I had assumed was that the life guard would be there in the chair which was at that end. But after this happened and I was so emotionally wrecked, it turned out that there was NO lifeguard on duty. I had entered the area with the lifeguard there and assumed some element of safety even though the children were my own responsibility. But there was no lifeguard there to help in such a situation/accident. I found out that the lifeguard took a break for lunch and it is not like he/she informed the parents at the pool that he/she was leaving the pool. He/she was there when we entered. I would have not gone into the pool with one child had I ever thought there was nobody else watching as well. The lifeguard said he/she changed the sign at the entrance when leaving for a "break." That was of no use to anyone already in the pool area. All I know is that it was very scary for me and that was even with having taught my kids and taken them to swim lessons starting when babies. Anyway, we have all gone through a lot with our kids and I kinda forgot this story until now.</p>
<p>dmd77 -- I don't know the current status, but in 1981 Reed did not have a swimming requirment for graduation.</p>
<p>My son is a lean as they come and has no trouble staying warm in the water. I second the thyroid test.</p>
<p>I spoke to DS today and he mentioned that he has his swim test tonight; just rattling it off as another thing he has to do. I brought up this thread and he explained that the prez had told them that a Williams student had drowned; he wasn't sure under what circumstances. The young man's parents offered
Williams a large endowment under that stipulation they reinstitute the swim test which had been abolished. </p>
<p>Scary stories: my little tousled haired blond boy ran across the ferry, climbed up on the chairs and stood on the ledge ready to stick his head out open port hole windows. If he had fallen in I don't think swimming lessons or life guards could have saved him from LI Sound.</p>
<p>Soozie, I was haunted by what ifs too. We screamed for him to get down, and miracle or miracles, he listened. Humbling to not be able to run as fast as a two year old.</p>
<p>Swimming lessons won't help any child who falls into freezing water or is swept away by an ocean current -- and no toddler is truly water "safe" -- but they will prevent tragedies such as the ones we've read about when the drowning victim is an 8 or 12 year old in a backyard pool. My kids' grandparents had a pool in their backyard -- and we often took family vacations with them at places with a pool. Truthfully - if my kids hadn't known how to swim, I wouldn't have wanted them visiting their grandparents' house --- it simply is not fair to expect the old folks to always be on their toes with active children around. </p>
<p>I remember once when my son was about 6 and had just learned how to swim that he taunted me & his dad, daring us to toss him into a hotel pool -- so we did! It was a hot day and we were all dressed casually but not for swimming, but of course it was a joke and we were all laughing because we knew he could swim well enough to get back out of pool - and we were there to go after him if he couldn't. My son thought it was a big joke, but one reason I took him up on his dare that day was to conduct my own "swim test" in a safe setting -- I was very happy to see him bob to the surface and swim confidently to the side of the pool. </p>
<p>It's all those little incidents, like the kid running around at the edge of the deep end of the pool while the mom is distracted over by the shallow end, that make those swimming lessons worthwhile. Water skills may also help a child survive in lakes, rivers, or the ocean for the length of time it takes a rescuer to get to them -- so even though that's no guarantee if a kid goes over the side of a boat, it's better than not knowing how to swim. You can throw a life preserver down to someone who is treading water.... you can't do that for someone who has already gone under.</p>
<p>Which brings us to this story: <a href="http://www.sanduskyregister.com/articles/2007/09/04/front/394976.txt%5B/url%5D">http://www.sanduskyregister.com/articles/2007/09/04/front/394976.txt</a></p>
<p>
[quote]
Chuck Herndon, 60, of 102 Laylin Lane, and his wife, Cindy, saw the plane just after it took off from the Kelleys Island Land Field Airport.</p>
<p>"It looked unusual," Cindy Herndon said, recalling the plane's behavior. "It was very close to the water. It went up and down twice and it headed toward the water."</p>
<p>After the couple saw the plane go down, Chuck Herndon launched a row boat and directed it toward where the plane went down.</p>
<p>He said that a boy's cry for help pierced the darkness. He rowed toward the cry and the 7-year-old boy grabbed the side of the boat. Chuck Herndon pulled the boy into the boat and rowed back to shore.</p>
<p>Cindy Herndon said the boy told her the plane broke apart, his seat belt released and he was able to swim out.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Reed currently requires six quarters of PE, but there is no swimming requirement.</p>
<p>My kids took sailing lessons and one of the things I liked is that they always did capsize lessons early on.</p>
<p>The drown-and-endow story is, I believe, an urban legend. Cornell, Harvard, Chicago, and now Williams all have it.</p>
<p>The simplest explanation for the swim test is that colleges want to make sure their students are exposed to as much unnecessary torture as possible.</p>
<p>The summer before I went to college old high school friends (OHSF) of my dad invited me down to stay with them for a week at their home in Huntington Harbor. On the dock outside their home was their motor yacht, and the 8 foot dingy I had learned to sail in many years ago. I asked if I could go sailing, though I hadn't sailed in years. Mr. OHSF helps me rig up the sail and pushed me off. </p>
<p>It was Monday, of Labor day weekend. His little finger of bay led directly into the mouth of the harbor, with all the pleasure craft coming home for the weekend. I was tacking down one side of the channel, and then cut across on a big opening to tack back up the main channel, when wouldn't you know it, I caught a huge gust of wind and flipped my boat over. Mr. and Mrs. OHSF were watching this with binoculars from their deck. They didn't have any kids, and were thinking a 17 year old, capsized in the middle of the main channel on Labor Day was bad, so Mr. OHSF was off to get the keys to the yacht when Mrs. OHSF yelled back that it was ok. </p>
<p>Well, it was kind of OK. Some young gentlemen from across the way felt I was a damsel in distress and immediately jumped into their motor skiff to come "save" me. Just as they got to me I pulled enough of my weight onto the keel to pull the boat upright, but not before one of the fine young men dove into the water, forgetting for a moment that HE didn't know how to swim. Okay, I held him up as I grab the line from my boat, floated over and deposited him back with his friends, and swam back and climbed into my boat and sailed home. Mr. and Mrs. OHSF were extremely impressed. </p>
<p>But if you have a son that wants a reason to learn to swim, maybe it would impress the blond in the wet t-shirt a bit more if when you dove in to save her she wouldn't have to save you first.</p>
<p>I remembered it well. It does shrink, It does float. </p>
<p>I missed the mandatory fresh'man', ROTC drill, at our landgrant, by one year. </p>
<p>I also think that mandatory weapon, to kill, training; fundamentals of money management; ethics and morals; public speaking and writing; how to present oneself as a gentleman or gentlewoman; should be taught in HS and again in college. A refresher course for all wannabe politicians.</p>