Parents of the Class of 2019

[mom2rtk]

Just texted with my son - apparently, the other guys in his apartment already had a party. He said he's not about to snitch on anyone (they're not currently permitted guests in their apartments yet), but he was a little disappointed in them. He stayed in his bedroom.

My daughter is off campus in an apartment with 3 girls who all agreed to avoid parties and large groups. Meanwhile I'm reading the parents' FB page with reports of lots of parties with no masks and shoulder to shoulder kids. I hate sitting around waiting for this to all fall apart.

 

[mjkacmom]

Since UD is a huge party school, cops give $300 fines and kids end up in court during normal times, and now they are stepping it up even more. Some parents are complaining! There are a bunch of street known fir outdoor dages, and apparently they are in full swing. My daughter loves parties, hopefully I can scare her, it takes thousand of dollars in attorneys fees to get these charges off of their permanent records. The restrictions are 10/25 again.

 

[Eureka]

Since UD is a huge party school, cops give $300 fines and kids end up in court during normal times, and now they are stepping it up even more. Some parents are complaining! There are a bunch of street known fir outdoor dages, and apparently they are in full swing. My daughter loves parties, hopefully I can scare her, it takes thousand of dollars in attorneys fees to get these charges off of their permanent records. The restrictions are 10/25 again.

DS is living with four other guys, one he hasn’t met yet, so I hope he has the same sensibilities as the others. The city they’re in has an ordinance right now that they can’t have more than 10 people, including the ones who live there, in a residence. Punishable by $5,000 fine and/or a year in jail. So I think they will not want that!

 

[yeahdisney]

Made our choice. Not sending DS back. All his classes are online.
Today I called the dorm and shared not bringing him tomorrow, they shared they made a different decision regarding dorm charges . If the student doesn’t come to room there- they still have to make the first payment, but they don’t have to make the second payment. And that will hold the room for the spring semester. (There all four payments).

My family is betting close down date. Mine is 30 days from the day classes start.

 

[KristiMc]

My son will be moving back to his campus on the 24th. Until 2 weeks ago he was going to be living on campus (2 year on campus requirement) but they asked for volunteers to either stay home or move off campus so they could move everyone to single rooms. He and his roommate took the $1500 incentive to leave campus and decided to look for an apartment. Not much available at this late date but they finally found one and signed the lease today. At this time he still has 3 in-person/hybrid classes, 2 remote and 1 online. Hoping the in-person/hybrid classes stay that way.

 

[MerissaAndMomLoveDis]

So, Stanford reversed course and announced on Thursday that they are not allowing Frosh and Sophomores in on campus housing for Fall Quarter as they had planned. We had planned to leave on August 28 to drive DD to campus. (On a side note, also on Thursday Southwest cancelled my return flight ). Only undergrads with special circumstances (about 800 total undergrads) will be allowed on campus. My DD actually did get approved for special circumstances housing, but it is going to be pretty bleak on campus. No “pods” of 8 students as had been planned. She has to decide by Thursday if she will go back for fall quarter on campus in special circumstances housing taking all remote classes or taking a leave of absence. After taking remote classes for both Spring quarter and a 10 week summer term, she will not take remote classes online again in Fall. We don’t even have her financial aid letter yet. Sigh. I’m leaving it totally up to her.

 

[mom2rtk]

So, Stanford reversed course and announced on Thursday that they are not allowing Frosh and Sophomores in on campus housing for Fall Quarter as they had planned. We had planned to leave on August 28 to drive DD to campus. (On a side note, also on Thursday Southwest cancelled my return flight ). Only undergrads with special circumstances (about 800 total undergrads) will be allowed on campus. My DD actually did get approved for special circumstances housing, but it is going to be pretty bleak on campus. No “pods” of 8 students as had been planned. She has to decide by Thursday if she will go back for fall quarter on campus in special circumstances housing taking all remote classes or taking a leave of absence. After taking remote classes for both Spring quarter and a 10 week summer term, she will not take remote classes online again in Fall. We don’t even have her financial aid letter yet. Sigh. I’m leaving it totally up to her.

What a mess. And no financial aid letter yet? So frustrating.

 

[bjscheel]

DD plans to stay at the apartment if it all goes online, so I haven't worried too much about it. But roommate said yesterday she would go home. DD would be sad to live alone, and I don't know what would happen with sharing of expenses, so I'm hoping it just doesn't happen.

DH decided we'd get her a new Macbook Air for her birthday next week. Apple has them slightly discounted for college students, with free Airpods too. Those might be nice for Zoom classes.

 

[mjkacmom]

DD plans to stay at the apartment if it all goes online, so I haven't worried too much about it. But roommate said yesterday she would go home. DD would be sad to live alone, and I don't know what would happen with sharing of expenses, so I'm hoping it just doesn't happen.

DH decided we'd get her a new Macbook Air for her birthday next week. Apple has them slightly discounted for college students, with free Airpods too. Those might be nice for Zoom classes.

Her roommate signed a lease so she’d still have to pay. My daughter’s lease was signed in June and she hasn’t spent a night there yet (and the next 3 months are due September 1, and she’s been paying $50 a month for utilities).

 

[bjscheel]

Her roommate signed a lease so she’d still have to pay. My daughter’s lease was signed in June and she hasn’t spent a night there yet (and the next 3 months are due September 1, and she’s been paying $50 a month for utilities).

I do expect she will keep up on her rent (both girls have been paying on it since May and just moved in Saturday). But she might not pay part of the electric if she's not there. It's in DD's name and she paid for the summer herself since it was only $18. At least I don't think the electric will be very high, since their heat won't be part of it. Cable & wifi are in roommate's name and start Saturday, and the cable is only in roommate's room so I would hope that could be cancelled. They have yet to work out cost-splitting as they wait to see what actual costs are.

 

[MerissaAndMomLoveDis]

What a mess. And no financial aid letter yet? So frustrating.

Thanks for the empathy. It HAS been frustrating—all of it. Finally received the financial aid letter. It was fine—no big surprises. I think she is leaning toward a gap quarter.

 

[Colleen27]

So, Stanford reversed course and announced on Thursday that they are not allowing Frosh and Sophomores in on campus housing for Fall Quarter as they had planned. We had planned to leave on August 28 to drive DD to campus. (On a side note, also on Thursday Southwest cancelled my return flight ). Only undergrads with special circumstances (about 800 total undergrads) will be allowed on campus. My DD actually did get approved for special circumstances housing, but it is going to be pretty bleak on campus. No “pods” of 8 students as had been planned. She has to decide by Thursday if she will go back for fall quarter on campus in special circumstances housing taking all remote classes or taking a leave of absence. After taking remote classes for both Spring quarter and a 10 week summer term, she will not take remote classes online again in Fall. We don’t even have her financial aid letter yet. Sigh. I’m leaving it totally up to her.

Wow, what a mess. I would have thought, back in March, that schools were going to do a better job of handling fall but so many really don't seem to be doing much differently with all the last-second changes and unknowns. Good luck to her with whatever she decides about the quarter.

 

[mjkacmom]

Thanks for the empathy. It HAS been frustrating—all of it. Finally received the financial aid letter. It was fine—no big surprises. I think she is leaning toward a gap quarter.

Make sure she applies and gets it accepted.

 

[MerissaAndMomLoveDis]

Make sure she applies and gets it accepted.

Thanks. At Stanford they just have to fill out a form notifying if they are taking a LOA (or a new thing for this year—using their flex quarter) for the quarter, on a quarter by quarter basis. All LOA notices will be accepted for fall quarter up to the first day of school, you don’t have to get approval. It was just more urgent in her case to make the decision since she has to withdraw her special circumstances housing draw request or move forward with her housing draw request by today.

 

[soccerdad72]

Talked to my son last night - sounds like he's settled in now. One of the guys (who apparently was not at the party at the apartment) told him to text him if the guys threw another party and he'd do what he can to talk to the others. Overall, it sounds like the 6 of them are getting along pretty well - I think my son's becoming one of the cooks for the apartment. He's made dinner a couple times for everyone. It's only been a week, but I think everyone has chipped in somewhat, either cooking, cleaning or buying food for the apartment.

Classes seem to be going ok so far. He said the online classes are hard to stay focused on and a couple professors aren't posting the lectures after class, which he wishes they would. The professors have said they didn't want to post taped lectures because they wanted to encourage students to be online live and not have the ability to go back to the taped lectures. He's only had one in person class so far, with another one today and his first lab on Thursday. His biggest concern is with his math course (he's taking a 3rd year math course, Boundary Value Problems). Sounds like he's already a little lost - unfortunately, this in one of his purely online classes. He's already looking into when the professor might have office hours or if he has a TA that he'll be able to reach out to.

On campus has been odd. He's been trying to get involved with some clubs, but none of them can do stuff in person yet, so he's a little virtual-ed out right now. He's still glad to be back at college, though.

 

[mom2rtk]

DD's university starts today. Local K/12 district starts today.

Apparently there's a nationwide Zoom outage. Anyone surprised?

 

[PollyannaMom]

Apparently there's a nationwide Zoom outage. Anyone surprised?

Nope! DS got an e-mail about it, but thankfully they don't start until Wednesday, and it should be fixed by then.

He made it up to Maine safely today. I've had a text when they got there, a quick FaceTime call showing me the suite, and more texts a few minutes ago asking for parking information. He seems happy to be back.

 

[TB'sWidow]

We took Dd the rest of her stuff to move in on Friday it went well even though we couldn’t go into the dorm to help set up like last year an I did get sad watching the other parents able to go in with their students.
Classes were to start today one in person other virtual which didn’t happen because of the zoom crash .

 

[PollyannaMom]

DS texted about an hour ago - they are having a thunderstorm and the power is out. Classes start tomorrow.

 

[mom2rtk]

I've been back and forth all day yesterday and today with DD. A/C has been out in their apartment for 2 days. And of course they've had heat warnings today. Found out today it's the entire building. They did come put one small window unit in their small shared living room. Not sure how they expect 4 girls to sit in there doing online classes together. Or to sleep.

Kids on campus are pretty unhappy based on posts in the parent's Facebook page. Some food locations are not up and running. Some have limited capacity. I will say that if they couldn't get the food delivery part of this right, they had no business opening.

DD can't get her parking pass purchased. System won't take her registration and nobody answers the phone or email. I'm guessing they'll figure it out and charge her then promptly close it all down again.

More than anything, I feel for the incoming freshmen. Based on comments from parents, many are bailing and heading home. They're feeling really isolated and unable to connect like in "normal" years.