<p>What have you heard about the kinds of kids who choose substance-free housing?</p>
<p>Do they tend to be the very studious/nerdy kinds of kids, or are they often pushed there by their parents? Do they tend to feel relieved about their choice, or do they regret it?</p>
<p>My son is very anti-drugs and alcohol, for whatever that's worth, but if he eventually chooses a dorm or floor that is substance-free, I wonder if that would isolate him from the average kid. If he goes to a regular floor, I am concerned that he would feel too pressured to drink, but at least he would be in the mix with a variety of kids. He won't have to decide until next year, but am thinking about this question as we start to go on college visits.</p>
<p>Young people choose sub free for all sorts of reasons.
Some that I can think of besides being pressured by their parents.
Have gone through treatment for substance abuse and prefer sub free.
Feel that a dorm which is sub free, will be quieter than a " quiet dorm" since that is generally adhered to only after 10 pm.
Slightly older than the average freshman & want a dorm where first year students are interested in pursuits other than living out Animal House.
Prefer subfree for religious or other personal reasons.
Subfree has the same sort of kids that the other dorms have, it is just that in subfree even if you are of age, you cannot drink in the dorm, so it does have a slightly different atmosphere than dorms where other students may be using substances.</p>
<p>I requested sub-free housing because I don’t do drugs, drink alcohol or like parties, simple as that. I don’t imagine I’ll have any problems making friends. If this thread is still active once the school year starts, I’ll get back to you on how sub-free actually works from the inside :)</p>
<p>My son and I visited a friend who lives in the sub-free housing at Penn. She’s a very sweet girl and the dorms seemed pretty normal to us. We walked across the hall and met a really nice young man from Cuba who was also in the sub-free dorm. Again, he seemed pretty normal to us. They’re there because they wanted fewer distractions, I think, and wanted to be able to concentrate a bit more on studies. Also, they wanted to make their own fun without alcohol. We know the young lady and she’s social and does tons of activities on and off campus.</p>
<p>My son was in a sub free all freshman dorm last year. He was a bit apprehensive about it because he had not requested it. He ended up making wonderful friends his first year in the dorm. He said some of the kids were pretty militant (his words) about not drinking but most had nothing against it, just preferred to keep it out of their living areas. This did not stop many kids from drinking or partying elsewhere but they did not have to deal with the vomit in the bathrooms etc.</p>
<p>My daughter cannot drink or do drugs due to a health problem, but I think the quality of her college life would have been diminished if she only socialized with kids who did not do either, to be honest. If a student lives in a substance-free dorm, then that does not mean all friends will be abstainers, of course, but the dorm residents will be, and often dorm residents end up being the family while at college.</p>
<p>I also worry about the kids who leave home with no experience with alcohol, because they are the ones who end up in an ambulance when they do try it. Regardless of how “militant” or reluctant they may seem now, things can change. The simplest safety measure, in my opinion, is to tell them that the body metabolizes one drink in an hour, and anything more than that can cause varying degrees of effect.</p>
<p>College has a lot of pressure, and transition from home is difficult for many. It seems that many students use substances to help with both, and at the very least I would tell my kids that people have reasons for abuse, that sometimes need to be understood rather than judged.</p>
<p>I think it’s a great idea. I know from my own experience at college and now watching my son that most of the friends we made in college were not in our dorms. </p>
<p>My niece requested a “quiet floor” for her dorm and loved it. In fact, many of her friends who lived on “regular” floors would come visit her so they could get their studying done in peace and quiet as well.</p>
<p>I have two pretty similar kids. The first to go to college did not choose sub free housing at least in part out of fear that it would be too nerdy or too militant on the non-use front. Was happy where she was but also learned that sub free really just means it’s not present on the floor and that RAs make more of an effort to provide alternative entertainment so kids don’t have to go to “parties” to have fun. The second followed her to the same school, and did choose sub free. Also happy, has chosen sub free for sophomore year as well. Neither one is a complete teetotaler, both have friends who drink and friends who don’t, and both are happy with their choices.</p>
<p>My son’s observation is that the sub-free dorms that he knows mix several groups. One are kids who are uncomfortable with drugs. Tend to be quirky, sometimes uptight, but social. Others are kids who are very sheltered, often dominated by parents. Many of these are not especially social. A number use alcohol (or drugs) but don’t want it in their dorms. These tend to be the most socially “normal.” And, in one case, the sub-free dorm housed a drug dealer (new markets?).</p>
<p>My son had sub-free 2 years out of 4 and wished he had it at least 3 out of 4. It may vary by college, but I never thought they seemed “quirky”, not wanting to drink or have drunk students around all the time is being more mature in a sense. He never had high damage fees, really dirty bathrooms, broken items during drunken parties, etc. He could always go to a party, but didn’t have a noisy party going on all night in his dorm. He didn’t miss the drunken roommate vomiting on the floor, passing out, or other things friends would complain about.
My daughter’s dorm had either non-drinkers or students that just didn’t bring it back to the dorm and again, it was usually very clean, quieter but it was social. To say only drinking is the way to socialize isn’t correct, but I can see that certain types,situations might vary a bit year to year.</p>
<p>I know a young lady who was assigned to a substance-free dorm. She did not choose this. She found two types of students there:
Students who were extremely religious
Students who were court-ordered to live there because they had a substance abuse problem
She requested a transfer, as she found that she did not have much in common with these students.</p>
<p>We noticed this at a few colleges that took us into a room or two in a substance free dorm. We immediately noticed religious posters and religious objects prominently displayed in just the very few dorm rooms we were shown.</p>
<p>“Students who were extremely religious” – is this a bad thing parents? Ought our kids not have experience around people who are pious because of faith as well as atheists and extreme partiers and all in between? Even if they’re fire breathing fundamentalists, I think our kids will learn how to handle them, no?</p>
<p>I was never around very religious people and was glad to know a few at my HYP alma mater.</p>
<p>Both my S’s lived in sub-free dorms their freshman year at big state universities. Most of the dorms were called sub-free. So it was all pretty much the regular college type kids living there.
I don’t think the “sub-free” rule was a huge deterrent to the partying. It still happened…a lot. </p>
<p>S1 said by the end of freshman year prob. every guy on his floor had attended the alcohol ed. class after being caught drinking beer at one time or another.</p>
<p>My cousin’s freshman yr roommate was a Muslim girl who got up at dawn to wash her hands & feet so she could pray. Coming from a nominally-only Catholic family, this was a new concept to cousin. But she admired the roomie’s obvious faith. Needless to say, no alcohol in that room. BTW the roomie is not “extremely religious;” this is simply what you do before prayers. </p>
<p>The guys who work at the gas station I used to fill up at when my daughter was dancing had pictures of someone I took to be a Sikh holy man in their little booth. I bet they have such pictures in their homes too, even larger ones . And they are wearing turbans and I know they have those little knives in their clothes. Are they extremely religious? No, they are totally average Sikhs. </p>
<p>I grew up in a house with a little statue of St Mary up on the wall at the foot of the stairs, a picture of Jesus at the top of the stairs, and the Infant of Prague over the sink. My parents were not extremely religious; I knew people who were, and there is a big difference.</p>
<p>Don’t assume that a poster or icon or rosaries left lying around or images of various holy people mean extreme religiouslty. They usually mean the norm in home “faith reminders” for adherents of that religion.</p>
<p>My son lived in the sub-free dorm the first year. He chose it because he’d heard some harrowing stories from friends who went to college a year ahead of him about the amount of drinking at colleges.</p>
<p>He loved the sub-free hall and the friends he made there have turned out to be his closest friends all through his undergrad. He was also an athlete on a heavily drinking team, so he had a foot in both worlds. The sub-free hall was sort of a refuge from the partying.</p>
<p>There were a few kids in there with religious reasons, kids who just didn’t want to live with the smell of vomit in the stairwell, lots of international students, and a few who had medical conditions where they could not drink. The international students were an especially big positive for my son who now has close friends from all over the world.</p>
<p>I was not distinguishing. How could one distinguish about degrees of religious observance or belief when one does not even know the individuals? We made note that more items related to religion were on display in some rooms that we were taken to visit.</p>