Living at college

[hasikelee]

catholic79 I got your PM and I apologize if my posts came across as argumentative. I was just hoping to drop off a nugget of advice, but my jaded view might have tainted it a bit.

As to the rest of your questions, I would have to say let her go where she wants to.

Morally, she will do the right thing or she won’t, regardless of the situation and environment. I’ve been in bad situations before and it never occurred to me to do bad things.

In college, I was never attracted to the party atmosphere, the booze, the drugs, the sleeping around, etc. In fact, as I became more surrounded by it, I became more disgusted by it.

If she does want to party, drink and get it on, she will do that even if you put her in the strictest Catholic college in the world. She will find a way.

If you worry she is in between, why not round her out a bit? She could sign up for self-defense courses, a good thing no matter where you are going. And she could visit an Al-anon meeting to hear testimonies. She could volunteer at crisis centers. You could have a talk about safe, moderate drinking and how to spot fun parties versus “we can’t wait to get high and get laid” parties.

I was in a really conservative, uber moral homeschool group and trust me, the ones that wanted to smoke, drink, be impure and more did it very easily. It’s all a matter of her intentions.

 

[Pinkyyy]

If this is such a dangerous school, then why is she attending it? No offense, but is it because it’s closer to the fam?

 

[PatienceAndLove]

i have only lived on-campus for 2 semesters of my life.
had i not screwed up my life (completely on my own, no help from anything on campus) i would have enjoyed campus life immensely.
let DD live on campus for a semester. you can always change it in the spring.

 

[jc-servant]

I worked for the police department of a large state university in a relatively “safe” smallish city for many years as a student and then as a police officer. I can tell you that no school is 100 percent “safe.” We were aware within our agency that many private schools had some odd policies and “head in the sand” attitudes that fostered the image of safety while ignoring the realities of crime prevention and real law enforcement.

I believe that having a large campus police department (not a mere security force) is a good sign. They likely allocate more resources to safety and have the ability to pay better salaries and retain better officers due to opportunities for career growth. See if the police department has a website and see what they offer in the way of educational programs, safety/crime prevention initiatives and crime stats. Any real police department is required to report their crime stats to the FBI if they are in the US. Some schools reclassify things to protect their image, but you can still get some idea by checking them.

I believe that a dorm student will likely be safer if they are prudent than a commuter student. While there are loads of students up at most hours of the day and night and special programs and patrols on a campus, the area just off of a campus can be quite dangerous. One reason is that criminals can watch for girls who left the library to walk to off-campus housing alone or hang around the bus/train stops or parking lots looking for victims in the evening. Students who stay a little later in the library or who want to participate in a campus activity that goes later may suddenly find the area that they need to travel to get to the family home far less inviting/safe than during the work day hours. In contrast, many schools have an escort service where a student can have someone get them safely home from the library or other classroom area to the dorm.

I lived in the honors dorm as a freshman on a large state university campus many years ago, but I still have close friends in the police department there. They have better safety measures than any place that I’ve lived since. The response time on that campus for any alarm or police/medical/fire emergency is much faster than in my upper middle class neighborhood now. They have officers who are all at least first responders for medical and many are EMTs. They have been running free self-defense classes in the dorms for more than 20 years plus aggressive crime prevention education.

Bottom line for my 2 cents is this. I believe that any 18 year old with a lick of common sense and morals can negotiate campus life just fine. Please don’t be a “helicopter parent” who cannot stop “hovering” around their kid.

My cousin who teaches at a major university has seen a sharp increase in this type of overparenting where the mother will respond to an email from the prof to the student asking about an assignment. It is ridiculous to be checking campus email accounts and homework assignments and going to counseling appointments with your 20 year old “child,” but it is happening a lot with the generation in college within the last 5 years or so. It does not teach them how to manage their lives in the future when they must manage a job and other obligations without their parents doing it for them.

This is their chance to “learn” how to negotiate in the world with a safety net of the campus in place and without Mom and Dad right there. If they have an important question, they can do what I did and call home for advice. BTW, I lived 30 minutes from home on the campus starting at age 17 and I had been pretty sheltered by my parents growing up. Dad wanted me at home until I was married, and I thank God that Mom supported me living on campus so that I could try my wings.