College Freshman Moving Off-Campus Trend!! DD doesn't know what to do....and neither do I...

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08/31/2020 15:00

Subject: College Freshman Moving Off-Campus Trend!! DD doesn't know what to do....and neither do I...

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Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:I would recommend AGAINST starting college in an off campus apartment.

Those are riskier for corona spread. There is no one (like an RA) organizing social events, and keeping an eye on how residents are faring. In a dorm, your daughter would also have recourse if the roommate situation goes south in a dorm (i.e. , they will mediate any one moving out, no lease complications, etc). Also, this means your daughter can focus on school, without having to find time to grocery shop, cook, etc. Finally, if your daughter were to get infected, the school would kick in to care for her (food, monitoring, etc). Who knows how that would work off campus.

Let her adjust to college first, then in years to come, she can make the move to living off campus.

New poster. Parent of an older college student. OP, I agree with the post above 100 percent. Read the news -- off-campus apartments and houses are always hotbeds of partying at the BEST and safest times, even among the "good kids" who don't party as hard. Right now, off-campus residences will be virus incubators. Partying in off-campus living, even before classes began, is what sank UNC and other colleges just weeks into their school years.

PP is also absolutely right about other aspects like zero recourse if there are roommate conflicts, plus the hassles of shopping for food (more virus exposure potential, too), the big time suck that is cooking for yourself, etc. etc. And good point as well about how if your DD gets infected, who handles what? Will the college provide a quarantine space for her somewhere so she can get out of the apartmetn and not infect roommates? And if she becomes actively sick--what then? Colleges may not have the ability to be responsible for kids who are sick but not in campus housing. And if her roommate(s) get infected, do you really trust they'll self-quarantine?

This fall sucks for freshmen but I would not set her up for these problems. And once she's off campus she may find it difficult if not impossible to get back into campus housing later on. Some colleges never again guarantee you housing if you leave campus; you go to the bottom of the list for getting into dorms once you're "out of the system" at many colleges (not sure about UMW specifically). This pandemic is dragging on forever but by next fall there may be more normal college schedules and residential life, and she might be shut out of that if she's off campus from day one of freshman year.

You said that she'd be alone in her dorm, but is that actually the case? I don't think it can be. They aren't even going to open a dorm if just one kid or a tiny handful of kids are in it. Does she already know her freshman roommate or has already been in a lot of contact? She may be scared about "I don't know anyone except Roommate and I'll be all alone!" Talk to her about that because that kind of fear is normal even in normal times and not a good reason to cling to roommate and do as roommate does.

I would not give my kid this option, if I were in your position, OP. The issue is with the roommate reneging on their arrangement -- the issue is not your DD or dorms per se. I know you'll get "she's an adult now, let her choose!" types of replies here because that's common on DCUM, but frankly, she is still inexperienced enough that it's not helicoptering to intervene as you see fit in this particular case.

If the campus closes again, would you really want her sitting in an apartment in the same town, doing remote classes? Why? She can come home and do them. If she were a junior or a senior things would be different but as a freshman -- I'd say dorm, and then come home if campus closes.