<p>It seems that normal social boundaries are often crossed in a college roommate situation as each new student is looking to fit in and find a tribe. This gives the more aggressive student an edge.</p>
<p>American eggs are peeled the same way as eggs in other countries are peeled. ;)</p>
<p>(I know what you’re saying - it does take a while to get used to telling people to shove off, and the average 18-year-old girl may be quite bad at that skill.)</p>
<p>I have a problem with the fact that foreign people who are wealthy enough to afford this service are taking advantage of our US citizens by enrolling their kids in our state schools. I’m pretty sure UVA wasn’t designed so that wealthy foreigners could save money by enjoying a hefty supplement of my Virginia tax dollars. If she can afford a concierge and a party planner and all that other stuff, then they ought to charge her double what they charge any American enrolling in the university.</p>
<p>Parents are “breeding ineptitude,” by allowingand in some cases encouragingchildren to hand off those jobs, says Hara Estroff Marano, author of “A Nation of Wimps” and editor-at-large at Psychology Today. Figuring out how to do the laundry, cook a basic meal or even wait for a handyman “are not crippling responsibilities” but rather “minor life skills” that can prove useful if the housekeeper cancels.</p>
<p>If these kids are so wealthy (trust funded) that they will always have “hired help” that’s one thing. However, I’ve seen too many indulged young people who will not be forever subsidized by Rich Parents and wonder how they’re going to cope and live within a normal income once they’ve graduated. </p>
<p>Rich kids don’t only attend Elite Colleges. There are wealthy kids at a wide range of schools. </p>
<p>I wonder if these services refuse to buy alcohol for the parties/needs of the underaged??</p>
<p>Momzie - if those foreigners weren’t paying full, your kids would probably need to pay more or your tax would go up. Many state schools use full pay to subsidize their tuitions. Those foreigners are actually doing you a favor.</p>
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<p>Warren Buffett has given over $37 billion to charity. He donated $3 billion just last year. He has donated $9.5 billion to the Gates Foundation, which is, among other work, trying to eradicate malaria. He has stated that he will give away 99% of his wealty to charity by the time that he dies. Also, he and Bill Gates have, through the Giving Pledge, convinced more than 80 billionaires to donate half of their fortunes before they die. Quite frankly, I think it’s appalling to state that he “owes it to the American people to spend more of his money”.</p>
<p>Mr. Buffett humbles me. We all should be more like him.</p>
<p>[Warren</a> Buffett pledge as part of the $600 billion challenge - Jun. 16, 2010](<a href=“http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/15/news/newsmakers/Warren_Buffett_Pledge_Letter.fortune/index.htm]Warren”>http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/15/news/newsmakers/Warren_Buffett_Pledge_Letter.fortune/index.htm)</p>
<p>When I was in college – before the Iranian revolution–there were several Iranian girls in my dorm. One was probably middle class, but the others were clearly wealthy and highly connected. (Watching TV news once, one of them exclaimed, “There’s my BIL!” He was the oil minister.) They sent their jeans out to be washed and ironed, something that was astonishing to the rest of us in the mid-70s. 
I observed that the middle class girl helped out the upper-class girls quite a bit: blow-drying their hair for them, for example. I wouldn’t say she waited on them, but there was clearly a hierarchical relationship that they all took for granted. I observed the same thing between “Persian” girls in the 60s at my British boarding school.</p>
<p>All of them were very nice, btw. They were simply accustomed to certain things.</p>
<p>“It’s not looked at as an indulgence, but a need.” - AJ Rich, Founder of BCCG</p>
<p>HAH! Goes to show some people are rich snobs so dependent on money to get around that they crash and burn when such a “need” isn’t met!</p>
<p>I wonder if affirmative action helped one of the Colombian Papu twins get into Tufts… I also wonder what sort of grades he had because clearly, with his money, he can afford private tutors and more.</p>
<p>On another note, perhaps there’s nothing wrong with hiring people to do your work, even easy ones. However, it is nothing to respect either.</p>
<p>Thank you Marsian for providing a link to that article by Warren Buffet. I found this part to be particularly insightful:</p>
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<p>Well gee, we all could live in tents, wear rags, raise chickens and grow our own veggies in the backyard. Would everyone be happy with everyone else’s decisions then? I doubt it.</p>
<p>The idea that Buffet is Mr. Awesome for not buying a new car, but donating his billions to charity is actually hilarious in a twisted, but rational way.</p>
<p>Many years back, when my oldest of 3 was a teenager (now 33), she saw a therapist for depression, and somewhere along the line I told the therapist that my daughter had certain responsibilities in the house: cleaning her room, emptying waste baskets – really just taking care of her own stuff, not dusting all the furniture like my sisters and I took turns doing in the '60s in an upper muiddle class household. Anyway, the therapist (from Israel) informed me that “you hire someone to do stuff like that, you don’t use your kids to have household work done” (even making their own bed??) She said learning to keep a tidy bedroom does not correlate with anything positive. So there you have it. That’s a philosophy in some cultures.</p>
<p>Eh, everyone has different standards. Yesterday morning, my sister was at a conference for URM first year law students where there was a panel on differences in SES. They were talking about how weird it was to have conversations with people who have vacation houses and take weekend trips to Paris. My sister was sure to not mention that our family has experience with both of these things, and we’ve always had a number of friends who lived this way. (Disclaimer: Our country house was bought for $89 soon after our ancestors were freed from slavery, but it’s still sort of awkward to talk about it.)</p>
<p>Even though I think utilitarian knowledge is important and will at times look in disdain at my friends who don’t know how to cook an egg or fold a shirt, I have to remember that the first time my sister filled the gas tank for her car, it took the both of us, a full half-hour, and the manual before we figured it out.</p>
<p>Also somewhat hypocritically, to my family laundry service seems pretty okay, but maid service has long seemed outrageous. My father had free laundry service in the mid 1960s at his HBCU, as did all students. But, for us, having a maid when it had been one of the few career options open to my parents’ mothers and to the women in their cohort seemed inappropriate. For business reasons, my parents once considered moving to a country where maids and drivers are practically required of the middle class. That and the malaria rate were what led them to stay stateside.</p>
<p>There are also plenty of students who don’t know how to do things without it having anything to do with servants. One of my sister’s friends couldn’t make his bed to save his life, and he had grown up on a teacher’s salary.</p>