There have been a lot of discussions lately about how college kids should work

[hedgehog]

out their problems without help from Mom and Dad. There is a limit to what parents can and should do. For example, it's up to the student to get up and get to class and do the homework. On the other hand, students at college are cut off from just about their entire social network and really are on their own most times. The closest situation I can think of is basic training, and even the military takes steps to ensure that any hazing is kept within well defined limits, that recruits are kept safe and that someone is personally involved in the daily life of each and every recruit. It's my experience that colleges take no responsibility for their students well being outside certain very broad areas.

Some statistics to keep in mind:

suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students, claiming approximately 1,100 lives per year

http://thesop.org/health/2006/09/13/college-depression-and-suicide-are-universities-doing-enough

Medical studies show that the peak years for the onset of both depression and bipolar disorder, ages 15 to 24, encompass the college-age population.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/12/mental-illness.html

Schizophrenia also manifests itself most often during the same years people are at college , although I could find no direct information about how many students have psychotic breakdowns each year (Talk about the dog that didn't bark in the night - most schizophrenics have their first breakdowns during their college years, and no one takes a head count? I guess no one wants to know how big the problem is!)

Most colleges have programs discussing these issues; how many have a trained adult who is in direct contact with individual students to make sure they are OK?

Maybe the student with room mate issues is slipping into depression and can't handle the problem on top of everything else. Maybe the room mate issue is the stressor that triggers the depression. Maybe the roommate isn't really in control. A student who appears to be experimenting with sex and/or drugs may be having a break down and/or self medicating. If someone you've never met before is having sex with strangers night after night, is she a free spirit or is she mentally ill? How many trained psychiatrists are capable of figuring that out, let alone an 18 year old freshman!

It's easy to say that people need to work things out on their own. On the other hand, isn't it a basic tenet of the Democratic Party that people need help from time to time?

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. I was an un/misdiagnosed bipolar college (and jr/sr HS) student. I won't tell you what kind of

troubles I got myself into, but yeah there is always the possibility that a person is acting out of illness rather than intentionally malicious bad behavior.

My suggestion to someone in a living situation with a mentally ill stranger is to get out but also to try and get the other person help as you leave.

[hedgehog]

2. I wasn't sure what I was trying to say in the OP, but how is the average

18 year old supposed to be able to tell when a room mate is merely a jerk and when the room mate is a hazard to himself/herself and/or others?

Back before the 1960's, it was too easy to label someone mentally ill and force them into treatment, so the laws were changed. Now families are forced to stand by helplessly as loved ones refuse to take prescribed medication and end up living on the street, often self medicating with alcohol or street drugs, often a target for predators.

Back before the 1960's, colleges ruled dorm life with an iron hand. The rules were eliminated, but all too often now people living in dorms are subject to the living standards of the least considerate among them. Anything goes unless it attracts the attention of the local police department.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. I hear what you are saying and yes it can be tough, but I think in dorms

the area living coordinator (or whatever non-student adult is overseeing the dorm) should have some training in that area, at least enough to look for red flags when roommates apply for different rooms.

My Mom used to tell me what it was like living with a "house mother" in the 60s. Soooo different from the co-ed dorm I lived in in the early 90s.

[hedgehog]

5. The RA you get is as much a crap shoot as the room mate.

Some RAs take the job seriously, others just want to be left alone. Sometimes it's the college that wants to be left alone. One of my daughters applied for an RA position, but she thinks she was turned down because she reported underage drinking.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Which is why I suggest not leaving it in the RAs hands. Although things have changed and

maybe RAs no longer have supervisors like the ACs I had as a student.

[hedgehog]

6. I was thinking about house mothers the other day. How many girls would end up

getting raped at frat parties if there was a house mother or house father on site?

[GreenPartyVoter]

10. I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Forgot to lock the

door and a drunk guy from the other end of the floor got into bed with me. Roomies thought I asked him to come in so they didn't say anything. :eyes:

One of the downsides of living in a co-ed dorm.

[hedgehog]

11. My son was asleep in his on campus apartment when a drunken apartment mate took a wrong turn

and climbed into bed with him. My son ended up sleeping on the couch, and always kept his bedroom door locked after that. Nothing was ever said about the incident.



























Whenever the story comes up, I always tell my son that before he went to sleep on the couch, he should have gone into the other guy's room, pulled back the covers and pissed all over the bed!

[hedgehog]

13. My husband and I walked into our daughter's dorm, past the desk and went upstairs into her room

unchallenged. A few weeks later, I was on campus and looking for somewhere to have lunch. I walked up to a residence hall where a student casually opened the door for me. I asked at the desk if the dining hall was open to visitors, and the person there didn't know - but she didn't challenge my presence or ask for ID! I went down to the dining hall to find out that it was opne to visitors on moving in day.

Now granted, as a short, fat older woman, i look pretty harmless, but what kind of security is that!?!

[GreenPartyVoter]

15. I got in huge trouble for letting a kid from a different campus sleep in our dorm lounge. He

was falling down drunk and it was frigid out. I was afraid of him falling asleep in a snowbank. I had seen his campus ID so I figured if he was safe enough for one branch of the university system he must be all right for the rest of them.

The AC and the campus police got after me for that, but at the time it was 3am and I was a new little frosh who didn't want to bother anyone at that hour.

Then I got in trouble because one of the couches from the lounge went missing. Yeah, I held the door open for the guy who took it, but he was bigger than me and I didn't want him to break the glass in the door, and anyway it was only going down the the lounge in the basement which stupidly had no furniture.

I was a lot of fun for the AC that year. :eyes: I propped the door open to bring in stuff from my car. I participated in a Ouija board session in the main lounge. (Ok, the door thing I totally get but the Ouija board?)

[MineralMan]

17. Yup, you were trouble on two legs, for sure.

:toast:

[GreenPartyVoter]

18. Yeah. I wasn't particularly brilliant or stable back then.

[MineralMan]

19. Well, I was just teasing...you really didn't do anything wrong...

You were just a naive freshwoman.

[GreenPartyVoter]

21. Well, the door thing was wrong and I knew it. *hangs head* I was supposed to

write an essay on why it was wrong, but I never did so the incident went into my permanent file.

[MineralMan]

25. Uff da! There goes your political career...

Once they find out you never wrote that essay...Glenn Beck will feature you on his show.

[hedgehog]

20. One of the things that always worried me about my kids is that they

had no street smarts when they went to college. They knew they could eat raspberries right off the vine without washing them, that they should wear an orange vest to go walking in the woods in November and similar small town/rural skills. They also would politely hold the door open for strangers, which is an absolute no-no for dorm residents.

Dorm security is only as good as the dumbest kid in the dorm.

On edit - I held the door open for some kids during orientation and got reamed for doing so. It was embarrassing then, but now I sympathize with that RA!

[GreenPartyVoter]

22. Yep. That was my problem, too. And I worry about my kids being in the same fix one day.

[pnwmom]

28. The RA is often just another student, and the training

varies from school to school.

[GreenPartyVoter]

37. Very true. The ACs were somewhat more like house mothers, though not nearly as strict and

in my case she had to oversee 3 different dorms rather than just one. (She lived in mine, though, so she was around for the night time debacles.)

[jinto86]

3. One thing I have noticed

We expect everyone to be fully mature (or at least nearly so) by the age of 18... this just doesn't work out a lot of the time. For many teens it does, but for others, not so much, and parents don't always get that maybe its not the best idea to send out a late bloomer into the world at the age of 18 to sink or swim. I have noticed that its mostly western 'advanced' cultures that do this too. Most of my classmates when I studied in Korea for a term still lived at home with their families, such a thing is unheard of in the American phyche (sp?) where even if they go to college in their hometown they are still expected to live in the dorms.

[hedgehog]

9. It's an observation I've made myself. If a scientist took a young primate

from its family grouping and thrust it into a cage with a bunch of other unrelated young primates, he'd be accused of animal cruelty!

[pnwmom]

29. And the reason we do? Because the old draft age was 19.

So the argument was, if they could be drafted, they should be treated as adults in all other ways.

The truth is that brain development isn't complete until around 25 -- but the military probably likes getting them when they're still young and fearless/reckless.

[Epiphany4z]

8. I have always thought there is no cookie cutter

way to handle kids, be it college, drugs, sex ed....in a way you have to follow your kids lead.....just within my family the way I have had to handle each one is vastly different. Some situations require more parental help than others.

I have 5 children 2 of which where both in college last year...its been a wild ride.

[MineralMan]

12. As some others have pointed out, college has changed.

When I first went to college, in 1963, the schools still operated in loco parentis. Rules were in place that were much like the typical parent had for their kids late in high school. Dorms were segregated by sex and the girls dorms had strict rules, closing hours, and other typical 50s sorts of morality rules.

That ended in the mid-1960s, due to excesses by the colleges. In the school I attended, a 21 year old senior woman was expelled from the college (a state school) for being in a man's apartment. Just being in his apartment.

Well, she sued the school and, quite naturally, won. That was the beginning of the end of the school acting in the place of parents. By the early 1970's, that role basically was abandoned completely, and when the age of majority hit 18, it ended altogether, at least in public colleges.

Sadly, what did not change was the immaturity of a lot of incoming freshmen. So, they get into more trouble in many ways than they did when the school did things like requiring dorm residence for freshmen and sophomores. Dorm rules aren't anything like they once were. Combined that with the continuing immaturity of some new students and things can go to crap right away.

The trouble is that the changes came without any changes in the way the 18-year-olds coming to school were raised. If anything, they're more clueless than they were in 1963. Certainly they're less restrained by their upbringing.

It's a mixed bag of effects, really.

[hedgehog]

14. It's like the changes in the laws regarding the rights of mental patients.

Good intentions not thought through led to unintended consequences.

[MineralMan]

16. Much like that...

[yurbud]

23. who is saying they shouldn't have help besides Republicans?

[pnwmom]

30. A number of DUers were responding that way to a poster who was

trying to help her daughter, who couldn't get any action from school authorities on her roommate problems (e.g., the roommate was allowing non-students to come into their room when the roommate wasn't there.)

[yurbud]

38. change roommates or get a single

[pnwmom]

40. That was the obvious solution but the school administrators weren't allowing

the young woman to do so -- until the mother finally mentioned hiring a lawyer.

[yurbud]

46. typical lazy admin

[Davis_X_Machina]

24. Left a master's thesis in second draft...

...in a desk drawer and just walked away after four semesters of grad school. Tended bar for a while, then went into the Catholic high schools where a subject area BA was enough to start. During that fourth semester, I routinely went a week without going more that 200 yards from my apartment. Nobody noticed, and since I wasn't violent, or frankly psychotic, it wasn't really anyone's job to notice. I made my bartending shifts, and a monthly meeting with my thesis director.

Would it have made a difference? Is grad school -- I was 24 at the time -- too old to have a minder? I don't know. But I'll always wonder -- I was a bartender in a classic Enormous State College town -- how many self-medicating depressives were paying my rent and stuffing my tip jar.

[hedgehog]

26. As an example of the full circle of life, how many people have their

first psychotic break while away at school and over the age of 21? Even if someone notices something is wrong and notifies the family, the family has no right to assist the person or even have contact with any physician unless the right papers were signed.

To top things off with a trifecta: if a person drops out of school due to mental health issues without getting a formal leave of absence, then they are no longer a student and no longer covered by any health insurance the parents have!

[pnwmom]

27. Great, thoughtful post, hedgehog. Recommended. n/t

[TxRider]

31. Wow, we should just ban colleges.. ... nothing but suicide factories

:sarcasm:

[Shell Beau]

32. Now how did you get that from this post?

I am quite sure that is not what the point was AT ALL.

[TxRider]

34. It's a joke..

[Shell Beau]

35. One can never tell around here.

[pnwmom]

41. No, but we could all think before we type. n/t

[Shell Beau]

33. I think parents need to be there for their kids no matter what the age.

Even now when I get sick, or when my baby gets sick, I call my mom. I am still her kid even though I am an adult. There is a point where you have to let your child be independent, but if they need or want your help (as long as it isn't an enabling situation) then by all means help and guide your child. You go from being under your parents care 24/7 basically to being on your own in a sense. They need some pushing here and there, some guidance here and there, and they need to be able to stand alone. It is a fine line I think. Never having raised a college kid, I can only go on my own college experience with my own parents. It was a tough tough time. My oldest brother died in a car accident the day before I left for my freshman year in college. My parents were not my usual parents for me that first year. They were always there, but maybe a little stricter than they should have been. I guess losing a child makes you really cling to the ones you have left. But I will use a very similar approach I think with my children as my parents did with me.

[pnwmom]

42. What an adorable baby!

You're right, of course. It's not like a person turns 18 and is instantly capable of handling everything on his or her own. And when we've stopped asking our parents for advice, it's usually because we ask our friends, spouses, or doctors instead. No one can manage all alone.

[smoogatz]

36. Careful with statistics.

1,100 suicides annually out of a population of 18,400,000 college students (that's roughly the current number, according to the census bureau http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/012084.html) works out to just under 6 per 100,000. The national suicide rate as of 2005, according to the WHO, was 11 per 100,000 (http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/country_reports/en/index.html). So college students are only about half as likely to commit suicide as the general population. The same holds true for the entire American 18-24 age cohort, which in 2005 had a suicide rate of 10/100,000. I would argue that, while there's plenty of room for improvement, most colleges and universities are much better at identifying and providing services for young people at risk than the "outside world" is likely to be. I know we work very hard at it at my U, despite extremely tough budgetary conditions.

[pnwmom]

43. That wasn't the point. The point is that young people of college AGE

are at risk for any number of reasons. Just because they are in college doesn't mean parents should be significantly less involved in their lives than if they weren't.

[smoogatz]

45. I hate to contradict you,

but no--the OP is pretty much all about bad things that happen to college students, specifically, and whether we're collectively doing enough about it. You might want to take a minute to read it.

[Artie Bucco]

39. I inadvertently embarrassed myself in front of an RA....

I didn't know she was one at the time. I started talking this girl and I ask "Where you at the Jenny Lewis show?" she was a well dressed artsy hipster type. I talk to her some more and she mentions she is Mexican; I was embarrassed I didn't call it with being Mexican myself. Usually my Mexican detecting radar is usually spot on (By this i mean have the ability to tell Mexicans apart from other Hispanics and the fair skinned ones from white people) . She asks "Do you live in KC Hall? I saw you there once." I reply "No, I was just there smoking weed." Come to find out 3 weeks later through a friend that she was an RA.

[pnwmom]

44. Ooops! n/t