<p>I wondered about this, too. Can a school really decide to give you a full ride because your parent’s won’t pay</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>Are you asking if a school can decide to do what it wants with its own money? ??? Can’t you do what you want with your money?</p>
<p>maybe Kelsmom can chime in here, but maybe they were able to also determine that the parents behavior is abusive and give her independent status??</p>
<p>Cobrat, you keep saying it’s illegal, but there are shades of grey, based on relationships and precedents in those. It really depends on more than we know, as absweetmarie noted. </p>
<p>Including: if my parents were already posing problems and known to be stalking my facebook, I sure wouldn’t use FB as a testing ground. I’d flat out change to a different moniker. Certainly wouldn’t post the usual goofy things if I knew my parents were watching and already causing me grief. </p>
<p>My kid has a “domestic relationship” listed with a friend- not for one sec did I think this meant anything more than my adult friend’s declaration she’s in a relationshp with Colin Firth.</p>
<p>But, the question of would I enable a program to track their whereabouts? I considered it, in hs, when they scattered all across my town like loose marbles- after the time one called from a party and admitted she had no idea where she was (at that point there was “locator” but not a personal gps or navigator app.) Thought about it again when the provider sent me a little message telling me the other kid’s phone was used in Canada, we didn’t know she knew anyone in Canada- we couldn’t reach her and none of her friends knew she had left campus. (Turned out to be dumb, but ok.)</p>
<p>It’s not always the individual actions, but the sum total that raises concerns. And, no, you can’t always trust the instant media-</p>
<p>I also guess the college used it’s emergency prerogative authority to grant aid in these circumstances. Probably considered this an unusual exception to ordinary policies. Possibly “independent” for the immediate circumstances.</p>
<p>My 17 year old daughter’s FB status says she is married to another girl from her old school.They worked on a hideous project together for days and declared themselves “married” at the end of it. My daughter is straight and has a boyfriend, so I’m pretty sure her FB status, like that of many of her peers, is a joke.</p>
<p>One of my son’s recently reconnected—via Facebook – with the little girl he had a crush on in pre-school. She moved to Israel during first grade.</p>
<p>There is a wonderful old picture of them as “Ema” and “Abba” together at a pre-school shabbat from Oh-so-may-years-ago.</p>
<p>His FB status now shows him as “married” to her. His girlfriend of several months thinks it’s the funniest, cutest thing she’s ever seen…she says it proves he’s excellent husband material. (and in real life, they are far, far away from any of that).</p>
<p>In the words of Ronald Reagan, “trust but verify.” I use my cell provider’s locating devices on my kids’ phones occasionally to make sure that they are where they say they are. It keeps them honest. My D has even called my a few times when she has been lost and asked mt to “locate” her. We have also used the service to locate misplaced phones. And, sometimes, when my husband isn’t answering his phone, I check his location to see if he has left work yet. It’s all good.</p>
<p>^ And suddenly I’m glad that I grew up before tracking devices were popular on phones… </p>
<p>Luckily, my parents would never “check” on me like that.</p>
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<p>Because the parents also used keyloggers to monitor their daughter which is illegal in many jurisdictions due to violating local stalking, network, computing, and privacy laws. </p>
<p>Not to mention that if the D’s laptop was hooked to the college’s dorm network, such keyloggers most likely violated the college’s own computing security and privacy policies. </p>
<p>In fact, there’s a movement to ban or severely curtail permitted uses of tracking software for electronics to discourage stalking and performing illegal surveillance which conflicts with those laws. </p>
<p>It’s one thing to use such tracking devices to track down stolen electronics or find minor children who are lost/not where they’re supposed to be. </p>
<p>It’s another matter to be doing so for adults…especially one who is 21 rather than 18. </p>
<p>Especially when it is clear from statements of the mediators and the court that the problem is mainly with excessively overbearing control-freaky parents whose past behavior has been such that the school and mediators have effectively taken the side of the D.</p>
<p>Also, regarding the parents’ demands about her repaying tuition, unless there was a prior contract proving those payments were a loan of some kind, those demands are probably legally unenforceable as gifts…including cash gifts once given are usually the property of the recipient to do with as she pleases.</p>
<p>^ …no doubt something is rotten in Denmark, k?</p>
<p>^ ^</p>
<p>Considering all that has been reported so far, those parents really need to stop digging and be thankful the cops/FBI agents haven’t yet knocked on their door to question them on their computing shennanigans or arrest and put them on trial for it.</p>
<p>Especially considering such monitoring through use of keyloggers crossed state lines and involved effective intrusions into the college’s own computer network if that keyloggered laptop was ever hooked up to it while D was going about her college life.</p>
<p>@cobrat, I did not mean to intend to support employer snooping, only to point out it is prevalent, at least here in Silicon Valley.
I agree the parents are helicoptering and waayy over the top in this case.</p>
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<p>It’s one thing to track minor children while they are living in your home, although I’ve never personally done that. It’s quite another to be doing that to an adult daughter living on her own and attending college. </p>
<p>Recording keystrokes in order to read the adult daughter’s personal email, correspondence, to track which web sites she’s visiting, etc? If that is true, these people are so beyond inappropriate, I cannot imagine how anyone could possibly justify their actions. The “well, she must have done something to cause them to mistrust her” comments posted by others earlier in the thread are very poor rationalizations for this kind of behavior. </p>
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<p>Hmm, a matter of opinion I think. Not everyone would agree that doing that is “all good,” but if your DH doesn’t mind, and it serves to give you valuable information you couldn’t get by just leaving him a message to call you back, I guess the technology can come in handy.</p>
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<p>I agree. I used to stay over at my boyfriend’s house occasionally while we were in college. My parents would not have approved. But I was an adult, I rejected the notion that one must not sleep over at a man’s house unless you are married, and it was my decision to make, absolutely none of their business. Invading my privacy in this manner would not have resulted in my changing my values; the only thing it would have accomplished is causing friction. It is just not necessary for parents to know everything about their children’s lives.</p>
<p>The idea that it is somehow “different” if physical and cyber stalking is done by a parent to their non-minor child belies a lot of state’s domestic violence laws relating to protective orders that are designed and limited in use against, among others, relatives.</p>
<p>Once the daughter filed the police report asserting that her mother had assaulted her, the subsequent confrontation inside the performance venue and then outside of it would have made a strong case for a domestic violence protective order under these type laws.</p>
<p>Another aspect of the puzzle is that after UC gave the daughter the scholarship, the parents went to the school/department with their accusations against their daughter and basically threatened the school that the parents would go through legal channels to address the daughter’s issues and that would bring a lot of unwanted attention to the school. Apparantly, the school did not rescind the scholarship.</p>
<p>^I would be surprised if the school hadn’t, in some way, assessed her, gotten feedback from profs, the health center, (and possibly consulted Legal,) etc, to ensure their own butts were covered. If they had not, they could be liable for something or other, in the future, no? But, 07Dad, weren’t you also suggesting, earlier, that the restraint action is only that, in respect to keeping the parents at a distance- and full further conclusions, about who did what and when, who is more deeply responsible, can’t be assumed yet?</p>
<p>Nrdsb4, I recognize the fact that I’m very lucky that I never felt the need to lie to my parents either in high school or college. They never disapproved of where I was as long as I was safe. Sorry, but IMO, it’s pretty creepy to check on your kids like that. It’s like the security systems that alert you by text when your child hasn’t come home right away or the commercials that show parents watching their kids come home from school while they’re at work. It’s just… really creepy. It just feels so strange. </p>
<p>I think I’ve worked in dv for too long. Makes me suspicious when people feel the need to keep such close tabs on people.</p>
<p>My husband doesn’t care if I “locate” him, and I don’t care if he “locates” me. It’s very handy when one of us can’t answer our phone (in a meeting or something). It also gives us great peace of mind to know that our teenage driver has arrived safely where he is supposed to be. Of course, he could call or text us, but he doesn’t bother. Using this technology for these types of things is really not a big deal, although some of the other things discussed on this thread are quite different.</p>
<p>I think the whole “locating” ability is fine as long as it’s not being done for “nosy” or “spying” purposes.</p>
<p>It would be wrong to use it on an adult age child to see if he’s “spending the night with a GF” or something like that. But, if a family member is very oddly late, and can’t be reached by phone, to use it and see, “oh good, she’s still at her friend’s home,” then that can give peace of mind.</p>
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<p>I thought I had found a website that posted the actual order the Judge entered, but it did not turn out that way. I have no idea what the exact terms of that order are other than it has been reported that it requires the parents not be any closer than X feet to their daughter through sept of 2013. Now that the daughter knows of the tracking attempts, that sort of took care of itself. I imagine UC can keep the parents off the campus without a restraining order.</p>
<p>On the issue of assuming-- that’s just what I confirmed. Almost everything we are bouncing around is an assumption except it appears that all of the reports say that the parents acknowledged to the court that they had placed the tracking devices. They would almost have to admit that to be able to represent anything to the Judge about any concerns of what she was doing while 600 miles from home at college. Without the tracking how would they have a clue about her alleged illegal drug and promiscuity activities?</p>
<p>I have seen a site that has the daughter’s actual stalking request form filed in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas that you can read to some extent.</p>
<p>It is not the tracking of the laptop and the cell phone that is a problem…it is the showing up at the school and informing the staff that she had mental illness. If she were that concerned over the tracking of her laptop and cell phone, all she had to do was get her own phone account with her own sim card (and shut off the iphone tracking if it was an iphone) and replace the laptop.</p>