Chinese parents now camp out on campus when they take their kids to college!
I sat with a parent at an orientation lunch at my kid’s US LAC who was from China. This mom asked when I was going home, and I told her I was flying back across the country the next day (activities including families ended too late in the day to take an earlier flight). She seemed shocked, and told me she had rented an apartment across the street from campus and planned to stay for six months. Her kid did live in the dorm. So… not a tent, but one of the more extreme helicoptering examples I have seen in real life.
I’ve seen the same thing with Asian parents of boarding school kids. I thought that extreme but at least they were younger! In Korea, they call them “Geese Families”.
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/world/asia/08geese.html?_r=0”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/world/asia/08geese.html?_r=0
While this is very helicoptery, this isn’t a Chinese/Asian thing or a recent phenomenon.
When General Douglas MacArthur of WWII fame was a West Point Cadet around the turn of the 19th/20th century, his mother made it a point to move up to and stay in a nearby hotel suite where she can keep an eye on his barrack room to forestall any possibilities he flunked out.
Incidentally, this was one factor in why he was singled out for harsh hazing among older cadets during his plebe year.
If you read the article most of the parents are just staying a day or two. That’s not atypical here at all. We stayed at a hotel for three nights when we moved my kids in. We spent time exploring the town and doing the target and bed bath routine before move in, had a goodbye dinner the night of move in amd then left the next day after dropping off some last minute things at her dorm.
Franklin Roosevelt’s mother, Sara, rented an apartment in Cambridge while Franklin was enrolled at Harvard.
I think the point is less about whether and since when parents have been doing this kind of things; there are always outliers. It is more about the scale of it…There are quite many tents, and also they are lined orderly and perfectly. 
Having flashbacks of this gem of a thread http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/665449-relocating-with-d-to-east-coast-does-it-make-sense-p1.html
D2 started law school this fall. She said that one student’s mother came to everything at orientation, even the social events intended for students only. I should add that the family in question was not Asian.
Your story wins, @Nrdsb4. Wow! 
There is a CC poster who was coming with her freshman daughter from California to a Midwestern LAC and planning on staying a month. They are Asian American.
Douglas MacArthur’s mother stayed in that hotel suite for his ENTIRE West Point career and continued to helicopter over him AFTER he was commissioned.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/peopleevents/pandeAMEX109.html
And we’re talking about someone at a bona-fide military academy…not a regular 4-year college.
Good grief- MacArthur was in the late 1800s/ early 1900s… Now the parents can FaceTime or text. Posters are talking about current situations, not an isolated case 117 years ago.
I don’t think 2 or 3 days is helicoptering. The article mentions a family who traveled 7 hours on a bus to get there, and that’s probably not unusual. So they’d likely need to stay at least one night, and if they want to take a full day to help their kid get settled and see a bit of the area before departing, that’s 2 nights and I don’t see anything at all weird about that. I think it’s kind of nice that the university offers this accommodation to the parents. Some of them might not be able to easily afford a hotel. Some of them might like to meet other parents.
I think the MacArthur case is interesting nonetheless. He did have a lot of success later in life.
I read that MacArthur was hazed mercilessly at West Point because a)he was the son of a general and b)his mother had followed him to West Point. Clearly moms following their sons to school was seen as outside of the norm.
It’s nothing wrong to stay with kids 2-3nights at freshman orientation. Some colleges offer 1-3 days infosessions/orientation for parents too. I hope my kid’s school could offer me a tent,`so I and my husband could camp at gym, which experience we have never had before and it would be a lifetime memory. lol
When they tell you to go, though, you should leave.