Alcohol and Drugs at Boarding School

CTMom21
Wed, 07 Feb 2018 14:05:02 +0000

On the one hand, I’m a bit surprised by the amount of pot-smoking (in particular; it seems the most common) that my son tells me about, and surprised how prevalent it is among freshmen, but on the other hand I guess it’s not so surprising among a bunch of kids with access to money and who are away on their own for the first time. Many freshmen are repeats, so they’ve already been in high school and exposed to a lot. My son has been pretty sheltered and went to a very small middle school and has never experienced any of this, so it’s just a huge difference for him. He also tells me about kids getting caught and in trouble, so there is some policing going on.

It seems like it’s a lot of kids who are from farther away, so their parents aren’t around on campus and picking them up/dropping off and aren’t ever in their dorm rooms.

It may sound naïve, but I know my kid and I am comfortable that he hasn’t gotten into any of this. He tells me it’s offered to him and he says no, and in general he just stays away from the potheads. However, a bunch of kids got caught smoking pot a few nights ago, and DS told me that a lot of kids think that he snitched – something he would definitely not do (one of the dorm parents was checking through the dorm to see who was back from mid-winter break). THAT concerns me. He says everything’s fine, but I’m not even sure whom to talk to about it if there were a problem, without turning into a snitch.