<p>My kids have their passports & Social Security cards and I honestly wanted them to be in the habit of hanging onto their own important docs – I’ve got birth certificates, in part because I can’t see any possible need for them to have it. I still have the now-expired passport that I had when I was 16, and which I took to college with me – I figure if I could keep track of it all these years, my kids should be able to handle their stuff as well.</p>
<p>Ok, so ZG is going to Plattsburgh. I’ve heard anecdotally that there are trips to Montreal. Good for her to have the passport at school? Do many schools have safes or anything like that?</p>
<p>Zoosermom, a passport will be required for land crossings to Canada as of Jan. 1, 2008 so, yes, she should have it with her at school. Montreal is a popular destination of Plattsburgh students for many reasons, not the least of which is that the legal drinking age is 18.</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of any schools that have safes available for student use but there are lockboxes you can buy for your student where they can keep their valuables.</p>
<p>And she could always open an account at a local bank and get a small safe deposit box.</p>
<p>My kids have their licences but not SS cards. I was also concerned about identity theft. Both have memorized their SS numbers now. Both have cars and have driven for awhile so are used to being responsible with the regular adult stuff. I have passports here. My daughter needed hers twice last year but was home before leaving so she was able to take it with her and then give it back when she returned.</p>
<p>Actually I wish schools had those mini-safes like they do in hotel rooms. I wonder why they don’t.</p>
<p>My kids have their passports with them, mainly because they went to school from overseas. But birth certificates stay home. But one thing we did with the whole family’s important documents is - we scanned everything as pdfs. If and when something is lost, or a kid needs a copy of something, it is so easy to email a pdf. (My H does it, and he encripts it – Don’t want to send ID info via Internet unsecured. I don’t know how.) We had to do this with various forms when we were overseas needing to provide documentation to the income tax preparers.</p>
<p>"just"aMom- kids would hide illegal objects in them. Also the colleges don’t want to be liable for stolen property.</p>
<p>I was surprised my son’s dorm at USC had safes for each closet (one for each student) in his dorm. I suspect it’s because they built his dorm originally for the Olympics in LA & needed to have a place for the athletes to store their valuables. I have not heard of the school having any problems with what the kids store in the safes – don’t believe any of the other housing owned by USC has safes. No other parents have mentioned safes being in their kids dorm/apartment.</p>