I am alone with men in a professional context all the time. But never in their homes. Roycroft, what possible scenario in a professional life would require an at-home visit? Some visiting nurse situations- ok, I get that. Maybe a masseuse, house painter, interior decorator. And I imagine that if you are female interior decorator meeting a man alone in his home you have the option of bringing along a colleague to the meeting.
But MOST professional meetings take place in a semi-public place. A restaurant, an office, a factory floor, a distribution facility- people can and do wander in and out of ear- shot all the time.
Brava for being paranoid. Why do so many women wait until they’ve got a sexual predator on top of them to listen to the alarm bells?
Why is the onus on the daughter in this situation? The interviewer should be aware that meeting with an underage girl puts both in an awkward position. I think the interviewer is showing bad judgement. As a scout leader, I have always made sure that I was never alone with an underage youth. We all thought Dustin Hoffman was an admirable man we could trust our child with until a few days ago when we learned he he treated his 17 year-old intern.
I am glad to hear that this is how it used to happen routinely. It is probably an older guy who has done it this way for years. I am definitely a little nervous about ruffling feathers and having it get off on the wrong foot or having a poor outcome. But I am more concerned about my daughter; about her safety and also about teaching her now how to handle a situation that may make her uncomfortable down the road.
‘Women have been told to suck it up for generations’
Exactly! This guy is probably fine but if anyone thinks that the Harvey Weinstein stuff only happens in entertainment industry they are sorely mistaken. Hopefully with all the attention on that right now my D politely suggesting a public location won’t be frowned upon
I think this is overboard on some kind of “stranger danger” measure. Alums who are successful often have nice homes and like to entertain in them, and this is likely how they are thinking of it. It is also more convenient for them. Here is the thing – the alumni interview has little impact on admission. If something uncomfortable happens, your daughter can report it likely without impacting her admissions. This isn’t the casting couch.
I think you are making too much of the home venue. The harassment stories we are hearing now did not occur in a home, so no, being in another environment certainly doesn’t guarantee no harassment will occur. The interview was likely suggested on the weekend or evening or at a time when the interviewer would otherwise be at home and thus most convenient for him, not 10am on a Monday morning. If that were the suggested time and he didn’t otherwise have a home office, yes, I would be concerned. But if it is a time most people would expect normally to be home then I don’t think it is odd that he suggested it. Paranoia has a price. Not every man is a predator nor every woman a temptress, and it doesn’t help our professional relationships for either side to act otherwise.
I think it actually protects them both by meeting in a private space - no matter how nice a house is. The thought that it ok if something inappropriate happens because she can just report it - really, I can’t even wrap my head around that. The man in question may be the most delightful and innocent person on this Earth, but times have changed an we must change with them.
^^ Actually Weinstein attempted to assault women in his home while his kids were asleep and in a hotel room with his pregnant wife in the next room. I have known many fine members of the community make foolish decisions.
Because nothing inappropriate ever happens in a public space? I would hope my daughter by 17 would have the good sense to walk out regardless of the venue if something inappropriate happened; she will clearly need to do so in college. In any event, the original question has been answered.
Maybe you could start with just asking will someone else be home. I work with scouts and sometimes do have them to my home. For my protection, I make sure someone else is going to be home or ask the scout to bring someone with them. Have your daughter respond with something to the effect: I would appreciate the meeting with you and would be more than happy to travel to your home for your convenience. Please let me know if someone else will be home or if you need me to have a parent wait during our interview? As adults who work with youth and younger adults, it is protection from being wrongfully accused to want someone else there.
When my daughter was interviewing 6 years ago, she had one interview in a private home (with a woman). I didn’t give it much thought, other than to be annoyed that I drove her a good 40 minutes for what turned out to be a 12 minute interview. My son, 4 years ago, had one in a private home with a young alum (just out of college, still living in her parents’ home). Again, I didn’t give it much thought. But I just interviewed for my alma mater (which happens to be the one my son did with the young alum), and was instructed in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that it was completely inappropriate to interview in my home. To be honest, in your case I’d be torn between not wanting to make waves and being uncomfortable. Could you possibly contact the school and ask if it is in their policy to allow home interviews? It may be that he “didn’t read the brief” (or doesn’t care) and maybe he needs to be schooled.
Some public libraries have reservable study rooms. They have windows that one can see in and out of, but it is hard to hear through the walls and closed doors. Seems like those would be good for this purpose.
As a volunteer alum interviewer, we’ve been told by the school to make sure the interview takes place in either a public place and/or workplace. I would politely ask the interviewer if you can arrange for a coffee shop or some other public place. If he’s adamant about it being in his house, I would even ask the school to see if they can change the interviewer. Besides, the interview usually doesn’t count for much to the application anyway. It is usually a two way conservation, more for the student to get more info about the school and for the interviewer to make sure there isn’t any major flaws with the student that the application will not reveal. Being in a public place will protect both parties. I don’t think this is the time to test out your daughter’s ability to “handle herself in inappropriate situation” as some of the above posts have mentioned.
I don’t say “Brava for being paranoid.” The dynamics of a college alumni interview are substantially different from an actress, director, or producer meeting with a studio head with complete discretion to fund projects or not, or a junior gofer assigned to cater to a big star. Alumni interviewers don’t have that kind of power at all, and the situation is such that any hint of a problem would lead to immediate blacklisting of that interviewer, and a re-interview of any applicant affected.
In my lifetime, I have never heard a rumor, much less an actual story, even an urban legend, of improper behavior by an alumni interviewer towards an applicant. It’s not impossible that it could happen, but it’s impossible that it could happen repeatedly with the same interviewer. For practical purposes I think that means it doesn’t happen more frequently than other very rare, essentially random events, like getting hit by lightning. (There IS a great, wholly-fictional inappropriate Harvard interview in the film Dope, by the way.)
I think it’s probably a mistake to handle this by assuming the interviewer knows he doing a bad thing, or will immediately recognize the logic behind moving to a public venue. The whole idea that there is a problem will be insulting to some subset of interviewers. Without regard to any actual facts, I would present this as an issue raised by the applicant’s parent(s), not the applicant herself, and any change in venue an accommodation to them, not her.
I am of the opinion “better safe than sorry” when it comes to my teenage daughter being left alone with an older man - (and yes I can admit that it is sexist to be concerned about older men but not about older women). We have a male housecleaner who comes every two weeks and has been cleaning our house for over 8 years. I would say he is extremely trustworthy - we have unintentionally left money laying around and it has never been taken. That being said, I still never leave my daughter alone with him. If she is off from school on the day he is scheduled to clean, I will work from home until he leaves.
I would feel the same about my daughter interviewing with an alum at their home. I am surprised that all schools haven’t required interviewers to do interviews in public spaces.
I would not hesitate to have my daughter ask to move the meeting to a public place convenient to the interviewer. And I think it would be appropriate as a parent to send feedback to the admissions department at that school to suggest that they require interviewers to conduct interviews in public places. It just seems the prudent approach to protect both parties.
I do find it interesting how some assess risks. Statistically, it is far more likely that this student would be harassed, injured or attacked while driving to the interview, or even going to school instead of the interview. However, everyone has their own judgment of what is reasonable risk. Like JHS, I put this in the " hit by lightening category," but of course, some people are so hit.
I’d taken a break from interviewing for my alma mater, and was surprised to see last year that the new rules called for interviewing in a public place. I think it makes perfect sense and is an appropriate safety measure. However, I’ve seen comments from other alums grumbling about the new policy and saying they won’t continue to interview if they can’t do it in their own homes. Frankly, if they can’t see why it’s appropriate to do so in a public place, perhaps it’s better they retire as interviewers. For the OP, I’d contact the colllege’s admissions office to find out the actual policy, and if they do still allow interviewing in private homes, see if the interview can be reassigned to a different alum or done by Skype by someone else instead.
Norms change. And I think it’s ok to let an interviewer know that something which worked in 1992 makes people uncomfortable (or at least one person uncomfortable) in 2017.
When I first starting my career in large corporations, you got vacation time. You also got a few days “sick leave”. If you had a family funeral, religious observance, etc. you needed to tell your boss why and get “approval”, even in an emergency situation (parent dying a few states away and you needed to catch a flight to say goodbye). For extended illnesses, including pregnancy, you had to go into a lot of personal detail with your manager in order to start to process to go on disability.
Now my company offers PTO and personal time. How you use your personal time is- well- personal. If I use it to attend a funeral or get a root canal or celebrate Diwali is not my bosses business. If a pregnant team member has pre-eclampsia and is on bedrest I don’t know the details- I am informed that she’s on disability and expects to return to work on such and such a date. She doesn’t need to tell me the details of how, why, how dilated, how high her blood pressure is. And if I asked- I’d be completely out of bounds.
Things change. Not everyone in my company loves losing “control” over employees lives but that’s ok. The gain in privacy (do you really want to share with your boss the details of your cervical mucus and why you are going on bedrest early?) outweighs the feelings of those who have trouble adjusting to the new reality.
Is this interviewer going to be offended by being asked to move the interview to a diner? Is it moderately inconvenient? of course. Does the college require all interviews to be conducted in a public place? I’d bet $25 dollars that they do.
I think it would be a mistake to ask that the meeting be moved to a public place. Even if the request gets blamed on protective parents. You are essentially saying that you don’t know if you can trust this man. Or your parents don’t know if they can trust him. Some people will take offense to that, and your D won’t know for sure if this is one of those guys who will be offended. And that matters. If it were me, I’d drive her and waive to the guy from my car so he knows I’m sitting outside. It’s not unusual that kids don’t have their own cars and that you’d drive her there. And really, if your D feels at all uncomfortable while she is there, she leaves and reports him.
I think the other way of dealing with this is to call the school, let them know your issue, and ask for a different interviewer because you don’t want the prospect of negative feelings getting in the way.
My daughter had an interview with a male alumni at his home. My husband drove her there (because she didn’t have a license at the time) and waited in the living area, while the interview was conducted upstairs in the alumni’s private home office.
To be honest, she thought it was weird even though her Dad was downstairs. She said the interview went well, and that he promised her a “glowing recommendation”, but she still felt very uncomfortable.
“The student is 17, not 7. Thousands of girls are already enrolled in college by that age and are navigating frankly more difficult situations daily.”
I don’t know that thousands of teenagers are navigating something akin to meeting an older male alone in a private residence on a daily basis and feeling comfortable about it. In a workplace, a threat to cause a commotion would most likely stop any kind of inappropriate actions. How would a young girl protect herself alone in a private residence?
My opinion is: The student is 17, not 37. Most young women of that age have spent their whole lives following rules and submitting to authority - they are naive and don’t have much experience at all in asserting themselves in difficult situations.