One of higher education’s great debates is whether online courses will eventually replace the need for residential colleges. The arguments for online colleges are compelling, especially to parents who, as we have just seen, must bear the ever-increasing costs of a college education. If our children can get a college degree from the comfort of their room, thus reducing tuition and eliminating altogether the cost of room and board, why have residential colleges at all?1
While current educational technologies like massive open online courses might reduce college cost and even increase learning, college isn’t just about academics.2 Residential colleges are also places where young people begin to learn how to become responsible citizens, where they live in diverse residential communities, learn how to manage their financial resources, gain leadership skills in student government and on athletic teams, develop a sense of moral and ethical responsibility, and prepare for positions of responsibility in a democratic society. This is difficult to do if they never leave the comfort of their homes. So what happens outside the classroom to help prepare students for their futures? Indeed, what is life like in the residence halls and during the weekend? And what happens to students when they get into trouble?
To get a sense of what life is like in a residence hall, I check into Dimmitt, a former women’s residence at Morningside College, a regional comprehensive college in the suburbs of Sioux City, Iowa. The building, which was built in the 1930s, is a U-shaped pile of red brick with two wings that were added sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Today, a large portion of the first-year class lives here, with men on one side and women on the other. The interior is what one might expect a largely first-year residence hall to be: narrow hallways with small rooms lined up on each side. Each room holds two single beds, two battered desks, a dresser, and not much else. This, my home for the next week, brings back a flood of memories, some of them even pleasant.
Sheri Hineman, the residence hall director, drops by my room to greet me. She gives me two keys, one for my room and one for the front door. She then points out the bathroom across the hall, a rather basic, Clorox-smelling affair. I thank Hineman for her help and then I crawl into one of the two beds in my Spartan room. A boom box down the hall is blaring hip-hop music. I sleep fitfully until a blessed quiet descends at 3 A.M.
I’m up at 6:30 sharp and decide to head out to the Olsen Student Center, a modern dining hall just off the main campus, to grab some breakfast and maybe meet some first-year students. I’m alone in the early morning dusk as I walk up an extremely steep hill toward Olsen. As I enter the dining hall I am greeted warmly by Connie, an exceptionally friendly Sodexo food service employee. I look around the expansive and altogether pleasant dining room. Not one student is to be seen. What was I thinking? The kids all went to bed around three this morning and are still sound asleep.
After my solo breakfast, I visit the office of Shari Benson, director of new students. Many colleges employ a person like Benson whose primary responsibility is to keep an eye on first-year students. My objective in meeting with her is to explore in a bit more depth what takes place right after parents say good-bye to their kids and the end of orientation.
Shari Benson conjures up the image of a sympathetic parent the moment you meet her. Indeed, she is so familiar to Morningside students that she is known around campus as “Morningside’s Mom” and has been known to bring home-baked cookies to her meetings with new students.
For most parents, having a child leave for college is a big deal, one of those seismic moments in life. It’s not the same thing as when they went off to summer camp for a couple weeks because they eventually returned. Rather, going off to college often means leaving home for good because the beginning of college generally signals the beginning of independence from family and home.
Benson and I compare notes on the pregnant moment when parents are gently asked to leave campus. At Morningside College this happens the very first day of orientation, right after the 4 P.M. question-and-answer session for parents. In my experience, parents sometimes just don’t want to leave and linger on and on and on. But she tells me that, at Morningside, parents really do leave when they are asked to. Of course, there are lots of tears. But then, once parents have gone, homesickness eventually begins to set in for some first-year students. This usually happens sometime between the end of orientation and the beginning of classes. So right after orientation ends, the RAs have lots of activities going on in the residence halls to keep the new students involved. Then soon after orientation, Benson meets with each new student individually and encourages them to attend the college’s activities fair at the beginning of fall semester and sign up with at least one club or organization. She also suggests that they not go home Labor Day, thus cutting the metaphorical umbilical cord and establishing that campus is now their home.
Most students survive these first moments of independence after their parents say good-bye to them. But there is a safety net for those who waver. Resident assistants and professors teaching first-year courses are instructed to call Benson if they spot a homesick or depressed student, and she then arranges a follow-up meeting. Indeed, most colleges, concerned about premature attrition, watch closely for signs of depression like unexplained absences from class or students who rarely leave their residence hall.
When I first became a college president in the mid-eighties, first-year parents tended to be reserved and unassertive. We only heard from them when there was a really serious problem, like their child getting into trouble with the police. But starting in the mid-nineties, a key topic of senior staff meetings was the high volume of postorientation phone calls we were receiving from parents concerned about rather minor issues like a broken refrigerator or a roommate problem that could—and should—be resolved by the students themselves. Enter the helicopter parent—moms and dads who “hover” above their children, refusing to let go and, in the process, assuring that they will never grow up.3 The advent of the helicopter parent began, I think, when tuitions started to spike and parents saw college as a commodity, like a new automobile, rather than a privilege. Consequently, if they felt the product was shoddy or defective they would complain, more often than not, directly to the president.
I ask Benson how involved parents of first-year students get here at Morningside. “How much time do we have?” she responds with a hearty laugh. “Let’s just stay with the homesickness issue because this often generates a tremendous amount of parental concern. For example, a mom called me soon after orientation this fall to say that her son was super homesick. But after talking with her for awhile, it became apparent to me that it was mom who was super homesick, not her son! When I met the son as a follow-up to his mother’s call, he was bubbling over with enthusiasm. ‘How’s it going?’ I asked. ‘Great,’ he answered. ‘Have you been home?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you miss your family?’ ‘Not really.’”
And it’s not just homesickness issues. Parents sometimes feel that their child cannot survive without them and therefore become overly protective, feeling they must constantly be in contact with their child. So how often should parents and children be on the phone with each other? “Not ten times per day!” Benson responds, adding that going home every weekend is not a good sign either. According to a recent study, 23.5 percent of first-year students report frequently going home on weekends.4 The excuse some first-year students use for spending every weekend at home is that there’s nothing to do on campus. “There’s plenty to do on the weekends!” Benson exclaims. “Just look at the Morningside website.”
OK. So your child has settled in. Things seem to be going pretty well. He’s not coming home every weekend, and you aren’t speaking to him ten times per day. When he does call, he reports enjoying his new life as a college student. And then, all of a sudden, you get wind of the fact that not everything is so great. You discover that he is having roommate problems. Or he didn’t make the football team. Or he got a D on his first physics test. He’s ready to give up. What now? In my experience, poor initial grades are often caused by too much partying and too little study.5 The result is one of those grim family conversations over the holidays when parents begin to question whether the return on their investment is worth it. Perhaps your child should throw in the towel and come home? “No,” Benson says. “Parents act positively when they encourage their student to have a good time but to make academics their priority,” she continues, repeating what Dean Long told me at Vassar. “When academics are not going well, parents are not helpful when they tell their student to just give up. In this situation, tough love is what’s needed! They need to tell their student to maybe reduce their academic load if it’s overwhelming and stick it out.” Parents should also encourage their children to meet with their academic advisers.
Shari Benson’s parting words: “Trust that you raised your freshman well. Now is the time for your child to be independent and to grow up.” She pauses and smiles. “If you think about it, we parents grow up as well. By the time my kids graduated from college, I was a new person. It’s not just a one-way street!”
Often, the trauma of the first week of college is followed by. . . . silence! Some parents, who just three or four weeks ago were saying emotional good-byes, have yet to hear from their children and are wondering what happened to them. The following letter was shared with me by a first-year parent whose daughter had not written or called for at least a month after orientation:6
Dear Mom and Dad,
This letter may come as a pretty big shock to you. I think you better sit down to read it. I’m very sorry I haven’t written or called, and I hope you haven’t been worrying about me. Actually, my leg is much better now . . . you know, the leg I broke when I jumped out the window during the dormitory fire, after the campus riots. But this fellow who works in the garage across the street from our dorm was so nice; he let me move right into his apartment with him. And now I think I’m in love. And don’t worry, we’ve decided not to get married until after the baby is born next year. Will that be all right with you, Mommy and Daddy?
P.S. I didn’t really break my leg, and there was no dormitory fire or campus riot. I’m not in love . . . yet. And I’m not going to have a baby. But I’m flunking math and getting a D in history, and I just thought you ought to know how much worse things could be.
For the majority of parents, what goes on after their children have been dropped off for orientation—especially what goes on in the residence halls—is a big mystery and so they often imagine the worst, egged on by their sometimes evasive children. Do roommates really get along? Is it true that residence halls are defined by binge drinking, random sex, and loud noise? And what about men and women living together in the same building?
The person most knowledgeable about what goes on in the residence halls is the director of residence life. At Morningside College, this person is the aforementioned Sheri Hineman. She not only is the resident director of Dimmitt, the college’s largest residence hall, but also oversees residential life for the entire college.
So how is your child’s roommate selected? The procedure followed by Morningside and managed by Hineman is fairly typical for many colleges. Well before they arrive for orientation, all new students fill out a questionnaire that asks all sorts of questions about their living preferences, like when they get up in the morning and go to bed at night or what their study habits are. This questionnaire is then used to assign rooms based on these preferences. For example, Hineman will often put athletes together because they have early morning practice.
However, because roommate assignments sometimes cause anxiety (as we saw with Phoebe as she was leaving for Tufts), the process can get complicated. Hineman tells me that at Morningside about 10 percent of the first-year class doesn’t want to be assigned a stranger as a roommate and requests to live with someone they already know, like a friend from high school. She usually turns these requests down. Why? Because living with a stranger is an important part of your children’s education. It provides an opportunity for them to learn how to deal with people who come from a completely different social or religious background, or who have different tastes, or who subscribe to a different political philosophy. In other words, by living with someone they don’t know, your children are being prepared to live in an increasingly diverse and multicultural society. This doesn’t always happen when they room with friends or (as 25 percent of prospective college students do) use online roommate matching services like Facebook’s roomsync.com to find a mirror image of themselves.
Parents complicate the process when they become overly involved. It still amazes me the number of phone calls I received when I was a college president from parents trying to engineer their children’s roommates. Sheri Hineman faces this problem as well. “I had a freshman return his roommate questionnaire during summer registration,” she tells me, “only to discover that his mother had completed and mailed in the same questionnaire several weeks before. Needless to say, her son was mortified.”
Not that questionnaires guarantee a perfect match. According to a recent study, almost 50 percent of first-year students report having difficulty living together.7 Why does this happen? Well, as you perhaps know, teenagers are not always considerate. Hineman gives an example: “Two freshmen roommates last year here in Dimmitt were soccer players. During practice, one of the roommates collided with another player, causing a minor concussion. After being checked out at the hospital, she was able to return to campus. But when she tried to enter her room that evening, her roommate told her to get lost because she was with her boyfriend. The roommate with the concussion ended up sleeping outside in her car.” I later learn that the offender was talked to and when she still refused to apologize was removed from the room. Bad roommate situations happen and when they do they can usually be remedied. But in the first instance colleges want students, not their parents, to seek a solution; after graduation, it will be up to them to deal with annoying neighbors or problematic colleagues.
Sheri Hineman and I turn to a different subject concerning residence hall living, which is to say, the sometimes challenging environment in which first-year students live. Here I can speak with some authority, not so much because I was a college president (most college presidents live in stately homes often at some distance from the undergraduate residence halls) but because I have been living in a typical first-year residence hall for several days and nights.
There are many reasons why first-year residence halls sometimes resemble bedlam, especially in the early fall before midterm exams have taken place. As I am witnessing, most of my male teenage hall mates have an enormous amount of testosterone-driven energy and many of them haven’t yet learned how to study. According to a recent study, 36.8 percent of first-year students report having difficulty developing effective study skills, probably as a result of the chaos that surrounds their living situation.8 So what do our students do when the boom box is at high pitch and there is a floor hockey game going on down the hallway? There are a number of options for quiet study—the library, of course, but also the various public lounges and even the laundry room, where the white noise of washing machines and dryers helps block out the more unpleasant sounds emanating from the hallways. For serious students or, even more so, for students who come to college with a learning disability and require a quiet place to study, colleges like Morningside usually have “quiet dorms.” To get into one of these, however, requires a request from the student (again, not from the parent).
Alcohol can also be a disruptive factor. Knowing that all colleges prohibit underage drinking in residence halls (or, for that matter, anywhere else on campus) but also understanding that teenagers will drink anyway, Hineman and I discuss what the drinking situation is like in the residence halls at Morningside and how the college deals with the negative behavior that often results from alcohol abuse.
“Many freshmen have tried alcohol before they arrive at college, some more than others,” she says. “And the drinking scene varies from year to year. We don’t have statistics, but my gut tells me that 50 percent of our freshmen drink, some of them at the level of binging.” Hineman tells me that the college respects the privacy of first-year students and that the RAs don’t go looking for alcohol violations. But if there is an obvious problem or the drinking is flagrant, the RAs will write the student up and then pass the offender’s name on to the student dean who oversees alcohol-related violations. At Morningside College, this person is Associate Dean Andrew Pflipsen. If the offending students do any damage as a result of drinking, like pushing out window screens or punching holes in a wall, they will get a bill from the college. “Actually, since I’ve been here,” Hineman says, “illegal alcohol consumption has gone down. Getting a sixty dollar fine might be part of the reason, but it also might be because we are doing more education around alcohol abuse. For example, we have an organization here called CHA CHA, the acronym for Choosing Healthy Alternatives, Curbing Harmful Actions, that offers campus-wide programs around wellness. We also have wellness floors that promote healthy living alternatives, including not smoking.”
What Hineman says about a reduction in alcohol consumption at Morningside seems to ring true. So far I have not seen any evidence of systemic alcohol abuse like beer cans strewn around the hallways or discharged fire extinguishers. Yet on most college campuses, teenage drinking is a big problem, often resulting in the student involved ending up in the dean’s office—or worse.
One of the hot topics concerning residence hall life is whether it’s a good idea for men and women to live together in the same residence hall. When I went to college, men and women lived in separate residence halls, but starting in the late ’70s, living arrangements began to change rather dramatically—from men and women living in the same residence hall but on separate floors to men and women living on the same floor and even sharing bathrooms. Morningside’s situation is kind of a compromise between single-gender and fully integrated residence halls. Here in Dimmitt, men and women live on opposite sides of the building but they can visit each other’s rooms until 1 A.M. during the week and 2 A.M. on weekends. Whatever the living arrangements are, most parents (especially the dads with daughters reading this book) probably conjure up all sorts of sinister images when it comes to coeducational living. Truth be told, most first-year men and women living in the same residence hall treat each other as brothers and sisters. If they are doing sinister things, it’s probably somewhere else! Also, according to a recent study commissioned by the Association of College and University Housing Officers, first-year students living in a coed residence hall feel slightly more secure than those living in a single-gender residence hall.9
I think it is fairly obvious that Morningside College has their act together as far as residence hall living is concerned. But what if your child lands on a campus where this is not the case? What do they do, for example, if they are in an impossible living situation like the concussed soccer player discussed above? Your student—not you—should bring their concern to the appropriate college administrator and, if necessary, work up the college’s chain of command. They should go first to the residence hall director (a person like Sheri Hineman), but if nothing happens, the next person up the chain of command (and the person most residence life directors reports to) is probably the dean of students.10 If there is a legitimate complaint (and not all complaints are legitimate), this person should be able to work out an equitable solution. Parents should resist the urge to override their student and ignore the chain of command. As President Bacow said at Tufts’s orientation, the college really wants your student, not you, to deal with matters that affect their lives. And of course, except in the most extreme circumstances, most presidents and board chairs will not get involved in a residence hall dispute.
On a beautiful fall morning, I meet with Andrew Pflipsen, associate dean of students. While many larger institutions have separate deans, each with responsibilities for either social programming or discipline (at Tufts University and Vassar College, for instance), Dean Pflipsen must wear both hats at Morningside College. In a sense, he deals with first-year students at both ends of the spectrum: those who are leaders and model citizens as well as those who get into trouble. Wearing two or even three hats is typical for administrators working at smaller colleges like Morningside.
A big question on the minds of many is whether first-year students should become involved in out-of-classroom activities such as clubs and athletic teams and to what degree they should, to put it bluntly, enjoy the party scene. My own view is that not taking advantage of all that a college has to offer can result in a truncated and often disappointing college experience. Belonging to a club or socializing with classmates is an integral part of your children’s college education. The statistics bear this out: 63.4 percent of first-year students report participating in a club or group, many of them devoted to social outreach and community service.11 Moreover, evidence suggests that involvement in a club or in student government or on an athletic team complements academic work in beneficial ways.12
Dean Pflipsen agrees. “Our philosophy here at Morningside,” he tells me, “is to develop students holistically and to provide them with opportunities for leadership. And yes, I, too, think there is a positive correlation between extracurricular activity and academic success. What I know for sure is that first-year students who get involved are most likely to stay in college and graduate.”
One concern I share with Dean Pflipsen is that more first-year women than men tend to become involved with the student newspaper, or student government, or a club. I’m not sure why this is. First-year men often say they plan to join a club or write for the student newspaper and then never show up. But as Dean Pflipsen points out, fully 67 percent of Morningside’s first-year men are involved in intramural or intercollegiate athletics, a figure that is comparable to other colleges, and sports take a lot of time.
Partying is another social activity parents worry about. Parents may wonder whether their children are attending a suitcase college—that is, one at which the majority of students go home on the weekends, resulting in there being nothing to do on campus then—or, at the opposite extreme, a party school, where students are dissipating themselves in profligate debauchery. Of course, most colleges are neither extreme. Monday morning through Friday afternoon is for classes and study, but even during the week colleges like Morningside might sponsor an occasional evening study break. For example, Dean Pflipsen tells me about a midweek program called Salsabrosa Night, when students can take a break from study and learn how to salsa. Weekends are for further study but also for fun. Consequently, most students remain on campus during the weekend. During homecoming weekend ten days earlier, for example, the college was popping with all sorts of activities. Dean Pflipsen then cautions that the coming weekend might be a bit different since there is a big football game in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and lots of students will go home Friday night and then drive up to the game Saturday morning with their families. So not every weekend will be an entertainment spectacle.
Weekend festivities also take place off campus, especially in upper-class off-campus residences like fraternities and sororities. And since underage alcohol consumption is not permitted on campus, this is where most of the drinking takes place. Indeed, when we think about fraternities and sororities (which are often called Greeks because of their use of Greek symbols for their names), most of us probably have in mind the motion picture Animal House where, during the weekend, students drank themselves into complete oblivion. But not all Greeks are this way.
“Our Greeks are very different from most colleges,” Dean Pflipsen says. “We have two fraternities and one sorority and they are excellent. They have broken the stereotype of what so many Greeks have become in this country because all three have a purpose beyond being just a place to party and drink. They are heavily involved in community service.”
Dean Pflipsen’s comment reminds me of what Greeks should be, namely, places where, besides having a good time, students can learn leadership skills and engage in altruistic activities like community service rather than dissipating themselves by constantly drinking and partying. But I see little evidence of this happening, at least at the national level, and I advise students who are contemplating joining a social fraternity or sorority to know beforehand what they are getting themselves into and, in any case, to wait until sophomore year when they have a better handle on their studies. Of course, many colleges—and Vassar is a good example—do not have Greeks.
As Dean Pflipsen and I are talking, I notice a somber-looking kid in the reception area accompanied by equally somber-looking parents. My guess is that he is in trouble for some childish indiscretion. I take my cue and make a diplomatic exit.
An interesting paradox on most college campuses is that, while first-year students don’t attend church or synagogue in large numbers, issues of religion and spirituality are, nevertheless, matters of great interest to them. And so most colleges and universities—even public ones—employ a chaplain or group of chaplains, and often the chaplaincy is an important center of college life, even for students who are not committed to organized religion. Morningside College was founded by Iowa Methodists in 1894, and while most of its students are not members of the United Methodist Church (Roman Catholics have the largest church representation), the college has a robust chaplaincy program presided over by Kathy Martin (no relation), an ordained United Methodist minister. New students immediately feel comfortable in her presence because she comes across not as a fire-and-brimstone preacher but as a person who is really interested in their intellectual and spiritual development.
I ask Martin what percentage of the first-year class is involved in a church or religious organization. At most nondenominational colleges, such as Vassar or Washington College, for example, the percentage will be relatively low. “We are in the Bible Belt of the Midwest,” she says as we sit in her sunny office on the second floor of Lewis Hall, “so it shouldn’t surprise you that 30–50 percent of our freshmen were actively involved in a church back home. Sometimes freshmen come to Morningside and are not involved first semester, but by second semester they will start exploring again. During the first week of college, I often take interested freshmen on a tour of the area churches and synagogues so that they can find a church home.” She tells me that every week first-year students get an e-mail from her with a menu of activities that are sponsored by her office. This week, for example, besides some worship opportunities and Bible study, there will be a lecture by Stephen Carter, a well-known law professor at Yale University who has written extensively on civility; an opportunity to travel to Cedar Rapids during fall break to help with flood recovery; and a hunger walk in Sioux City sponsored by Church World Service. “What I want these students to know,” she says “is that they are spiritual persons and that the spiritual part needs to grow just like the intellectual and social parts.”
Chaplains like Kathy Martin also deal with a wide range of personal issues. “I often see freshmen who are experiencing difficult family situations,” she says, “for example, parents getting a divorce. I saw a freshman a few weeks ago who came to me after his parents separated. This young man felt that perhaps he had caused them to break up and he was contemplating dropping out of college to be with his mother and little brother. He was looking for encouragement and support. I told him that he was most certainly not the cause of the break-up and I encouraged him to do the right thing by staying in college.” She believes that encouragement and help in these kinds of difficult situations make spiritual growth and learning possible. This, of course, can be done by others as well. But most college chaplains see themselves as companions and a resource for students who are seeking to find themselves.
I once spotted a mother hiding in the bushes outside her daughter’s room peeking into the street-level window. I recognized this mother from orientation two weeks before and asked her what she was doing. “I’ve just got to know what Carrie’s up to!” she exclaimed, displaying not a little embarrassment at having been caught in the act by the college president. This is an extreme example of parental concern, but every parent, if he or she is being completely honest, would like to take a surreptitious peak into his or her child’s life, just to make sure everything is OK. I understand. I was a first-year college parent myself. But now I’m experiencing this parental fantasy by living in a first-year residence hall
Back at Dimmitt Hall—which I have only recently been told is called the Jungle—I’ve been having difficulty contacting Barry and his roommate Elliott, who were assigned to me as dorm buddies. My e-mails and phone calls, however, have gone unanswered. Finally, I just walk down the hall and pull Barry out of his room. Elliott is nowhere to be seen, so I invite Hank, who is also in Barry’s room, to meet with me in my single room across from the Clorox-scented bathroom and the now dormant boom box. They happily comply.
Come spring, Hank and Barry will be pitchers on the Morningside College baseball team and even though Barry is a Cornhusker from Lincoln, Nebraska, and Hank is a Cyclone from Ames, Iowa, they seem to be best friends. Indeed, they plan to room together next semester. They report that they enjoy being on their own, but they both miss home-cooked food! “And not having to do laundry,” Barry adds.
“OK guys, fess up. Have either of you been homesick since arriving at college?” I ask, thinking back to my conversation with Shari Benson about first-year separation anxiety. Barry and Hank look at each other sheepishly, then Hank admits, “I was at first, but it went away when I made friends.” There is an awkward pause. “OK, OK,” he blurts out on further reflection. “I’ve got to admit I was really homesick twice. The first time was during orientation. I wasn’t sure Morningside College was the right place for me. The second time was a few weeks ago when I had a fender bender. I had to drive my car back to Ames to get it fixed and then went to see my mom and my little brother. She and dad just separated and I began thinking that maybe I should stay at home and take care of them. But I came back. It was really hard.” I can see a tear welling up in Hank’s eye, and I wonder whether he is the first-year student Kathy Martin, the college chaplain, mentioned to me. Morningside is a very close community.
I ask Barry why he is splitting with Elliott, his current roommate, next year.
“Oh, Elliott and I get along fine,” Barry says. “It’s just that he’s a swimmer and has to get up at 5:30 in the morning and so we figured it would be better if we both had roommates who shared the same wake-up times. But I know of other difficult roommate situations, like the two guys upstairs. One parties every night and comes back very early in the morning. The other stays in the room all the time playing Halo on his computer and feels like he’s been abandoned. They just aren’t compatible.”
Thinking of Andrew Pflipsen’s description of the robust social scene at Morningside, I ask Hank and Barry whether there is enough to do on campus socially.
“Oh, yeah. Most of us socialize really well here,” Barry says.
“Where besides the Jungle?” I ask, having survived the midnight flag football games and noisy parties outside my door at the beginning of the week.
Hank and Barry look at each other again, waiting to see who will answer first. “Do you really want to know?” Hank asks.
“Absolutely,” I say. “Don’t worry, I won’t snitch on you.”
“Well, the seniors on the baseball team have an off-campus place where we and the women’s softball team hang out,” Barry says, confirming what Dean Pflipsen told me about off-campus parties.
“Yeah, they got plenty of booze and hopping parties going on Fridays and Saturdays,” Hank adds.
“But football games are also big,” Barry says, not wanting to reveal too much more about the baseball house soirées, “especially this weekend when we play the University of Sioux Falls. They’re the number two team in the Midwest and we’re number four or five.”
“Lots of freshmen will be there,” Hank adds. “You oughta go.”
“What about fraternities?” I ask. “Do you plan to join one?” At both of my colleges this would be a silly question. Half the student bodies joined fraternities or sororities. But, as Dean Pflipsen pointed out, the Greek scene at Morningside is not a big deal, at least not socially.
“Not me,” Barry says. “If I were at the University of Nebraska I might join one. But the baseball team is our fraternity. Most of the freshmen guys gravitate toward a team.” Hank is nodding his head in agreement.
I get back to Hank’s comment about partying at the baseball house. “So do a lot of your classmates drink?”
“Yes sir,” Barry says. “Over 90 percent drink,” Hank agrees. “Of course Hank and I don’t drink,” Barry immediately adds with a devilish grin.
“Of course not,” I say. But my bet is that Hank’s estimate is inflated. New students often think that this level of drinking is taking place when in fact it isn’t. According to the National College Health Assessment performed in 2014 by the American College Health Association, while college students perceive that 94.9 percent of their classmates used alcohol within thirty days of the survey, in fact 66.8 percent actually did, and 20.1 percent abstained altogether.13
“If you are quiet, you won’t get caught,” Barry continues. “Most Morningside freshmen are smart and keep a low profile.”
Hank then touches on an issue that is very much under discussion at the highest levels of university administration. “Most freshmen drink to make a point,” he says. “We’re told that we can’t drink. So because we are told we can’t drink, we drink anyway. If the legal drinking age was eighteen, I would go to a bar every once in a while and maybe have a couple of beers rather than figuring I have to down a six-pack or two at a party.” Barry is nodding in agreement.
Some college presidents would agree with Hank and Barry for the exact reasons these two guys are articulating—to be precise, that if the drinking age was lowered to eighteen, dangerous drinking might diminish considerably. The big question, of course, is whether highway deaths would then increase, as those opposed to lowering the drinking age argue.
“Of course drinking often leads to date rape,” I say remembering the “In the Sack” presentation I witnessed at Tufts’s orientation.
“Date rape is not that big an issue here,” Hank immediately tells me, “though girls drink as much as the guys do. But when we see a girl drunk, we make sure that she gets back to her residence hall.”
“Yeah, just last week I saw a freshman girl who was smashed trying to find her residence hall,” Barry says. “I was concerned both about her safety and that she was going to get in trouble with the police. So I got her back to her room and got her to eat some bread and drink water.”
“What about the dating scene at Morningside?” I ask.
“We don’t really date,” says Hank. “We mostly hang out with the girls’ softball team over at the baseball house we were just talking about.” I stand corrected: hanging out, not dating is what this generation does.
“And how did you do on midterms?” All this week, first-year students have been taking their midterm exams, the moment of truth for many of them.
“I bombed a sociology test. But otherwise I think I’m doing OK,” Hank replies.
“I’m not doing as well as I wanted to,” Barry says. “I’m just going to have to work harder next semester.”
The boom box down the hall starts thumping again. “How do you guys study with all this noise?” The weekend is approaching.
“I try to study between 6:30 and 8:00 in the evening,” Hank says. “But it’s sometimes tough to sleep.”
“You just get used to it,” Barry adds. “Well, sort of used to it. I have to admit I was pissed the other night when someone put the boom box in the bathroom and turned the volume way up at 4 A.M. That was going too far.”
“So what about enforcing the 10 P.M. to 9 A.M. quite hours?” I ask.
“I wouldn’t argue against that,” Barry replies, to my surprise.
Midway through my presidency at Randolph-Macon, for reasons I will mention in a moment, I decided that at literally the first event of orientation that year, just after the new students and their families had arrived on campus, I would personally meet with them in Blackwell Auditorium, a facility large enough to accommodate everyone. The students sat directly in front of me, their families in the back. I spoke with force that day because I wanted everyone, families and new students alike, to hear what I had to say. Looking straight at the new students and with all the conviction I could muster I told them that starting right now they should focus on being students and avoid all things that might divert them from this task. I said that some students think that college is a time to cast off family values and that while rebellion is a natural thing, some go to the extreme and their days are not spent being college students but being something quite different. I stressed that there are consequences to bad behavior.
I then told them about what had happened the year before. Just after orientation had ended, a large number of first-year students who had bought drugs from a returning older student were arrested by the Virginia State Police in a sting operation. The entire community was in total shock, and dealing with this nightmare was one of the hardest things I had to do as a college president. In the end, five first-year students, who had been recruited by the ring leader to sell drugs at the local high school, went to jail. The others were charged with possession of marijuana, a misdemeanor in Virginia. At least one student ended up serving six months in prison. All were suspended from college. Whether or not they felt grown up, the justice system considered them adults.
What happened at Randolph-Macon unfortunately happens on too many college campuses across America. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse’s “Monitoring the Future” survey in 2012, about 23 percent of high school seniors have tried marijuana in the previous year (6.5 percent use it daily).14 These figures correspond to a similar survey recently done by the American College Health Association showing that, in 2014, 21.7 percent of college men and 16.3 percent of women used marijuana within thirty days of the survey.15 Most colleges have zero tolerance for drug use and when students are caught either using or distributing drugs, they are automatically turned over to the police and suspended from college. The first year of college is supposed to be the beginning of a new life. But for some, this new life ends almost before it begins. I wanted these new students and their parents in Blackwell Auditorium that day to know what had happened the year before, and I wanted it to not happen again.
Because of my own experience as a college president with negative student behavior, especially concerning drinking and drugs, I return to Andrew Pflipsen’s office, this time to talk about the dark side of his job: dealing with first-year students who manage to get into trouble. What happens when students screw up? How are their indiscretions adjudicated? What are the penalties and consequences for bad behavior? Deans of students like Andrew Pflipsen see almost everything, from violations of residence hall rules, to the illegal consumption of alcohol, to, on rare occasions, the possession and distribution of drugs.
Alcohol is the drug of choice on most college campuses, and it is the main reason why many students get in trouble and end up in the dean’s office. Dean Pflipsen shares with me a typical first-year drinking incident:
I had a freshman this year who was hanging around with upperclassmen. One night, at an off-campus party, he consumed multiple alcohol beverages. I still can’t figure out how he managed to get back to campus, but campus security found him passed out on the sidewalk in front of Olsen. The Emergency Medical Service was called and when this kid regained consciousness, he refused to go to the hospital. The EMS people determined that his situation was not a matter of life or death and so called my office. Campus Security then got him back into his residence hall and put him to bed.
As we saw at Tufts’s orientation, many colleges have a “three strikes and you’re out” policy with underage alcohol consumption. In the incident described by Dean Pflipsen, the offending student ended up in his office the next morning. After a stern lecture, he was then given the option of either paying a sixty dollar fine or, if he agreed to take an alcohol awareness course, to have the financial penalty reduced to twenty dollars. Dean Pflipsen tells me that if this student is again caught consuming alcohol, the penalty will be more severe. A third violation could result in suspension for a semester or more.
Why are colleges so strict about underage drinking? Besides the fact that underage drinking is against the law, alcohol abuse can lead to serious violence, such as date rape. We also know that drinking impairs academic achievement. According to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, all college students, but in particular high-achieving students, experience significant reductions in academic performance when they drink.16
Most minor offenses such as getting caught drinking underage are dealt with informally through the dean’s office, as we have just seen. If the infraction is serious enough, however, the college’s judicial board gets involved. So, how does a judicial board operate?
Many parents incorrectly believe that colleges adjudicate bad behavior the same way the courts do. But while the two systems have some similarities, they are in fact very different. When a Morningside student is accused of breaking a significant college rule, like discharging a fire extinguisher in a residence hall or getting into a fight (both often alcohol related), a judicial hearing officer is appointed by the vice president for Student Life (usually a member of the administration) who then investigates the incident. Within two days, the accused student learns the specifics of the violation after which the officer hears testimony and assigns sanctions. If either the officer or the accused student feels that the violation should go before a larger group, the case is then referred to a judicial hearing board, a group made up of two full-time students appointed by student government, two faculty members, and two members of the administration. The accused student has the right to be accompanied at the closed hearing by a student advocate but only the judicial hearing board can hear testimony from the accused student and from witnesses. When testimony is completed, the board decides by majority vote whether college rules have been violated and, if so, what the sanctions should be. If there is new evidence, or if the juridical process has in some way been compromised, an appeal can be made within three days of the board’s decision to the vice president of Academic Affairs. This vice president can overturn the decision of the judicial hearing board, return the case to the board for further consideration, or reduce the sanction. But their decision is final.
With variations, most college judicial boards operate in similar ways. The problem, of course, is that if one’s child gets into trouble one’s tendency is to insist that the family lawyer be present at the hearing. While the involvement of a lawyer might be appropriate if a student runs afoul of the law for a serious crime like selling drugs at the local high school, lawyers (as well as parents) are usually barred from internal college judicial hearings because minor infractions do not stay on a student’s permanent record. Most sanctions involve being fined or losing a privilege, like being banned from playing on an athletic team or serving in student government or living in a college residence hall. The worst that can happen for more serious infractions, such as plagiarism or lying to a college official, is getting kicked out of college for a defined period of time. Though it is painful, this kind of tough love is often a necessary wake-up call for a student who has made a bad decision. These hoped-for transformations cannot happen when parents make excuses for their children or try to protect them from the consequences of bad behavior.
I wake up Saturday and the Jungle is dead. No midnight flag football games in the hallway, no boom box blasting away. Around 10 A.M. I walk up the hill toward Olsen for brunch. But something isn’t right. The campus is unnaturally quiet. Indeed, there is hardly any sign of life at all.
Etched on the sidewalk in front of Olson in faded chalk is a list of last weekend’s homecoming activities I’ve failed to notice until now. They included a performance by an area comedy team called Mission Improbable, followed by an annual event called A Taste of Morningside, in which area restaurants provided dinner for students and reuning alumni on the tennis courts across from Dimmitt. Finally there was an all-college dance from 9 P.M. to 1 A.M. But today—nothing. And then I remember Dean Pflipsen’s prediction that this weekend might be quiet since there is a major off-campus football game this afternoon—most students will have gone home last night to visit with their families before driving up to South Dakota where today’s game will take place.
I have a pretty good idea what most people would say if they were visiting Morningside on this particular weekend: this is a suitcase college! But Morningside really isn’t and, in any case, not every weekend is like homecoming at most colleges. So after a leisurely brunch, I hitch a ride with two faculty members and make the eighty-six-mile drive to Sioux Falls. When we arrive at the University of Sioux Falls’ football stadium, I see what seems to be the entire Morningside College undergraduate student body, all 1,180 of them, tailgating with their families in a marked-off area next to the stadium. The game has been billed by my Jungle hall mates as THE game of the year, since Sioux Falls is rated number two in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics League, and Morningside really wants to beat them as they did three years ago.
A mob of people are now entering the stadium. I grab a seat in the stands on the Morningside College side and find myself sitting next to Didi Simmons and her parents, Champ and Jill Peterson. Didi’s son Billie (“See him over there? He’s number twenty!”) is a first-year starter for the Morningside Mustangs and a resident in the Jungle. The crowd on both sides of the stadium is huge. I ask Champ, a retired high school football coach, how many people he thinks are in the stadium. “Six thousand easy,” he says. I’m incredulous. Most small-college football stadiums boast maybe five or six hundred spectators, a thousand at best. This place is more like what you would expect of a major Division I university football team back East. A huge screen above one of the goalposts comes alive, and everyone is suddenly on their feet. Cartoon bombs burst on the screen as the University of Sioux Falls Cougars come running onto the field. Now it’s Morningside’s turn. Three thousand fans are hollering at the top of their lungs. “Go get ’em, Billie,” Champ Peterson yells as his grandson’s name is announced. Didi is now on her feet, jumping up and down and pointing. “Look! Look! There’s Chaps.” She turns to me, “You know, Chaps is Billie’s best friend.” It’s none other than Chaps Wilcke, my next-door hall mate, who had jokingly asked me the other evening if I could mention him in my book. I promised I would, never realizing I would have such a great opportunity for doing so. Go, Chaps! The roar of the crowd abruptly dissipates as “The Star-Spangled Banner” is sung by a Sioux Falls cheerleader. And then the game begins.
I’ll spare you the gory details. The Sioux Falls Cougars dominate the game from beginning to end, creaming the Morningside Mustangs 28–3. Where their quarterback consistently connects with a series of Hail Mary passes, ours consistently throws the football directly into the hands of the nearest Cougar linebacker. But no matter. This is weekend entertainment at its best for the students and families of both colleges. Champ Peterson turns to me as the game winds down and says, “I wish the results were different. But can you imagine wanting to be anywhere else?” I half-heartedly agree. It was great fun sharing this event with my first-year friends and their families—until the temperature dropped thirty degrees! But then again, this is South Dakota.
Back in the Jungle, snug and warm in my bed after making the return drive from Sioux Falls, I am awakened at 2 A.M. by the fire alarm and a resolute knock on my door. When I open it, a stern-looking RA instructs me to follow her down the stairs and out of Dimmitt. Not the most pleasant experience but absolutely necessary. Everyone has been drilled to respond to a fire and nobody is allowed to stay in Dimmitt. Just what any caring parent would hope for—not a fire but a well-planned evacuation. Or so I foolishly thought. The alarm turns out to be a prank. My hall mates have returned and the Jungle is back in action.