Students, Welcome to College; Parents, Go Home
Tim Marsho watches his son Chris move in at Grinnell College.
By TRIP GABRIEL
GRINNELL, Iowa — In order to separate doting parents from their freshman sons, Morehouse College in Atlanta has instituted a formal “Parting Ceremony.”
Brian C. Frank for The New York Times
Boyd Monson, 19, and his father, Ronald Monson, at Grinnell College in Iowa, which holds a ceremony to formalize separation.
It began on a recent evening, with speeches in the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel. Then the incoming freshmen marched through the gates of the campus — which swung shut, literally leaving the parents outside.
When University of Minnesota freshmen move in at the end of this month, parental separation will be a little sneakier: mothers and fathers will be invited to a reception elsewhere so students can meet their roommates and negotiate dorm room space — without adult meddling.
As the latest wave of superinvolved parents delivers its children to college, institutions are building into the day, normally one of high emotion, activities meant to punctuate and speed the separation. It is part of an increasingly complex process, in the age of Skype and twice-daily texts home, in which colleges are urging “Velcro parents” to back off so students can develop independence.
Grinnell College here, like others, has found it necessary to be explicit about when parents really, truly must say goodbye. Move-in day for the 415 freshmen was Saturday. After computer printers and duffle bags had been carried to dorm rooms, everyone gathered in the gymnasium, students on one side of the bleachers, parents on the other.
The president welcoming the class of 2014 had his back to the parents — a symbolic staging meant to inspire “an aha! moment,” said Houston Dougharty, vice president of student affairs, “an epiphany where parents realize, ‘My student is feeling more comfortable sitting with 400 people they just met.’ ”
Shortly after, mothers and fathers were urged to leave campus.
Moving their students in usually takes a few hours. Moving on? Most deans can tell stories of parents who lingered around campus for days. At Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., a mother and father once went to their daughter’s classes on the first day of the semester and trouped to the registrar’s office to change her schedule, recalled Beverly Low, the dean of first-year students.
“We recognize it’s a huge day for families,” she said. Still, during various parent meetings on Colgate’s move-in day, which is Thursday, Ms. Low and other officials plan to drop not-so-subtle hints that “activities for the class of 2014 begin promptly at 4,” she said.
Formal “hit the road” departure ceremonies are unusual but growing in popularity, said Joyce Holl, head of the National Orientation Directors Association. A more common approach is for colleges to introduce blunt language into drop-off schedules specifying the hour for last hugs. As of 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 11, for example, the parents of Princeton freshmen learn from the move-in schedule, “subsequent orientation events are intended for students only.”
The language was added in recent years to draw a clear line, said Thomas Dunne, the associate dean of undergraduates. “It’s easy for students to point to this notation and say, ‘Hey, Mom, I think you’re supposed to be gone now,’ ” he said. “It’s obviously a hard conversation for students to have with parents.”
For evidence, consider a chat-board thread by new Princeton parents on the Web site College Confidential. “Do parents hang around for a day or two after orientation in case their kids need something?” one poster, mrscollege, asked. “I say no, but we have a friend who is planning to hang around for a while in Princeton for her son just in case.”
Some undergraduate officials see in parents’ separation anxieties evidence of the excesses of modern child-rearing. “A good deal of it has to do with the evolution of overinvolvement in our students’ lives,” said Mr. Dougharty of Grinnell. “These are the baby-on-board parents, highly invested in their students’ success. They do a lot of living vicariously, and this is one manifestation of that.”
He and other student-life officials encourage parents to detach — not just at drop-off but throughout the freshman year, including limiting phone calls and text messages.
Parents, of course, know that in their head. But they still struggle to let go.
After lunch on Saturday at Grinnell, before the hail and farewell ceremony, Gary and Glorialynn Calderon easily welled up while visiting the campus mailroom with their daughter. “It’s hard, we’re overprotective,” Mr. Calderon admitted.
His wife, a kindergarten teacher, said Grinnell’s message that at 4 p.m. college was starting and parents must go reminded her of what she tells the mothers and fathers of her pupils on the first day of school: “Say goodbye and just leave, because the kids calm down.”
Their daughter, Aileen, a softball player, said that she had initially been fearful about starting college, but “now I’m excited and ready to go.”
That seemed altogether typical of the freshmen, who were looking forward to the “floor bonding” exercises with dorm mates and were failing to share parental nostalgia.
The pressure to let go had really begun a year earlier while touring colleges, said Leslie Nelson, who with his wife, Jill Hayman, had spent three days driving their son, Micah, from New York City.
Ms. Hayman corrected her husband: “I think the pressure starts when the umbilical cord falls off,” she said. “I’m not the only mom here who’s been dreading this since that day.”
As a comfort, she had read books about the stages of grief. “You have to just allow yourself to experience the loss and grieve over what’s gone,” she said.
But Micah was eager to get on with it. “I haven’t been thinking about anything they’ve been saying,” he said, as his parents looked on.
As for Mr. Dougharty of Grinnell College, for the first time in his academic career he missed his own campus’s move-in day. He and his wife were busy Saturday, dropping off their only child, Allie, at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., to begin her freshman year.
Mr. Dougharty had made reservations at a bed-and-breakfast near the campus for Saturday night, but then his wife, Kimberly, questioned why they should stay around after dropping Allie off.
“I had to look at myself in the mirror,” Mr. Dougharty said. “I had thought, ‘On Sunday morning we can swing by and take Allie to breakfast.’ Kimberly was good and sane — ‘We have to get down the road.’ ”
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