Chance for Merit Money

weenie
Sat, 29 Oct 2005 20:59:13 +0000

flatlander: I agree about the food. Son is less than thrilled. I’ve tried to encourage him to do a little cooking in the kitchen in his dorm (which is really very nice) but he says he doesn’t have time. (I think he just doesn’t want to go down to the grocery store.) I told him maybe the kids should try to open a dialog with the food people - but he got quite defensive about that - insisting that they are so very nice and always open to suggestion. He seemed to not have any ideas for other ways to approach the problem.

bookmom: The scarf will fit right in! We were laughing at the girls at Denison at parent weekend. Many were wearing scarves! Some even already had those puffy boots on. It was, maybe, 50 degrees out - it was NOT cold.

Preppy is sort of hard for me to assess. Denison seemed less “status conscious” than some of the other schools we visited. Sort of in the middle perhaps. There are preppy kids, but really most of the kids look pretty ordinary to me. In general, the girls appear less “made up” than some places we saw. (Bucknell sticks out in my mind here.)

Here is my son’s and his friends’ observations about drinking: Yes, it goes on. (I just come right out and ask them.) Do they have any trouble avoiding it? No. They hang together and, so far, their social life seems to consist of going to campus events, watching movies, hanging in their rooms with friends (more movies), going to the mall, playing their sports and musical instruments. Three of his friends are quite religious and attend a dinner through their church at a person’s house in the village every Weds night. (She buys the food, they get to cook!) One of his friends is an EMT volunteering with the Granville fire dept, so he’s busy with that because he’s on call a lot at night. They are a pretty straight (OK - maybe a little nerdy) crowd - but they seem to be having lots of fun. When I asked the kids (all freshman) about frats, they said they didn’t know anything about them. Good, I thought.

My son reports that the RA does “write up” kids who are drinking in their rooms. Also, the dean of first year students sent a “progress report” on the class and did mention that there had been a couple of serious incidents and some lesser incidents of freshman alcohol abuse. They happen on every single campus though, from Ivy League to Community College and everything in between, you just may or may not hear about it.

You might get some insight into the drinking scene at various schools through campusdirt.com. They survey college kids about various aspects of school. The drinking part is under “Social Life.” It’s a very depressing view of virtually EVERY school on there. The critical thing is that your kid is able to make friends with similar interests. My son lucked out right away with a great roommate. He has also chosen very very nice friends. (We met them and spent some time with them on parents weekend.) I think being in the honors program has helped, as has his “extra curricular” activities - orchestra, jazz band, frisbee, badminton. Clearly, Denison did a great job matching him with a roommate, as he shares many similarities with my son.