I was watching them lose game at a nice restaurant bar for happy hour with our Clemson graduate (weather delay, got there closer to 4). Sorry for your experience!
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We went for both our kids. We did go to the football game for both and it was fun. Other than that we did our own thing.
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@Mjkacmom The comfortable college/Main street bar to watch the big game is always the call.
Wife did four Mom’s Weekends. Dad’s/Family weekend has always been a hard pass for me.
Always made sure to add an extra day to pick up and drop offs weekends.
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Everyone hates a noon game, especially the students who have to get up early! If it was a parents’ weekend, some schools do that on purpose (I think) to limit the chances of all day drinking by the students.
Wish I had a Parents Weekend to attend. Those were the days…
But, DH (Go Blue!) is attending the Michigan vs. Maryland game with DS/DIL (Go Terps!) the weekend before T-Day. He can pretend it’s Parents Weekend.
We attended Plebe Parent Weekend at USMA. It was very formal and very short because DS had to leave for crew spring practice the morning after the first-night dinner. USMA only hosts a PW for Plebes, so it was one and done.
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I felt badly because we were never able to go to parents weekends because they landed in October. It was always a bad deadline month for both my husband and I at our work sites. We did visit our middle daughter on alternate weekends which was fine with her.
We also refused to pay the gouging rates of the local hotels.
One homesick daughter went to Davis. It is a great school but apparently whoever plans these parent events, assumes that everyone wants to do wine tastings or wine and cheese events. (Napa) I can’t drink alcohol because I’m diabetic, and drinking straight sugar does not work for me, regardless of how much protein or insulin I have or have had. It also conflicts with the medications that I’m on. My husband never drank alcohol and he may have 3-4 mixed drinks a year.
One year, I called the event staff. I asked if any of the parent events (that didn’t include busy students) would be alcohol-free. I was put on hold, sent to different departments and finally received a live body. And I asked, “do you have any events that don’t involve alcohol? I’m on medication and I can’t drink alcohol.”
The fool that answered said that it was a social event that went hand in hand with alcohol. “We could ‘avoid’ the alcohol and have the cheese/crackers”. I said, “well what do parents do, who are in recovery, about these events? What drink options are there for people like us? Will there be soft drinks or coffee?”
“Well you can all have water.”
So now I was angry because I wanted to see our daughter, that’s what it’s all about but, I did mind that they wanted all the parents to participate in events that were just wine and alcohol based.
So I said I can fly or drive up for nine hours pay for a hotel, and attend a wine event that excludes my “participation”.
“Oh no, I said you could have water”.
So I said, “the next time you plan parent events, and send out emails, please know that a minority of parents may not participate in alcoholic events. I would rather spend the time with my child.”
“So you don’t have any parent events, where alcohol isn’t the main theme?” Any hikes to local farms? Tours? Dairy tours? Biking events?
“No we don’t.”
So we never attended any parent events because we would rather have seen our kids and avoid the alcohol events.
Edited to add: this was in the fall of 2012. I am assuming that they’ve fixed this since then. I know they have a lot of wine and cheese events that go on throughout the quarters for parents but I think they’ve added more family friendly events.
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I am finding that so many “formerly alcohol oriented” events (workplace, conference receptions, professional networking ) are now booze free and EVERYONE seems happier. The thought was that restaurants, bars, event spaces would refuse to host these since all their profit is in the booze. Well- turns out a lot of the EXPENSE is in the alcohol as well. So charge more for a fun smoothie bar at 9 am instead of a “make your own mimosa” event and people aren’t staggering in to the actual event already inebriated at 9:30 am. Or “do it yourself” juicing at 5 pm and then people can go home without having to uber because they are impaired.
The profit margins on the wine etc. are high. But having to hire more staff to serve and monitor, the event sponsor (not the venue) needing their own certificate of insurance, cleaning up after god knows what/who…. that also costs.
So the sponsors pay more for a dry event and everyone is happy. And if some attendees have to pre-game because they can’t get through an hour of meeting people without a glass of wine in their hand- that’s on them.
Your campus story is really sad. Whether someone is in recovery, can’t drink for medical reasons, or prefers not to discuss their own habits- wow.
We only went to one parents’ weekend, and it was for our third kid. She was at Coast Guard, which was both across the country and a service academy with all sorts of unique rules for plebes. It was informative but crowded, so we met her friends and never came back for another PW. We only ever returned to campus for weekends when she was rowing and graduation. (OTOH do attend all the graduation stuff that your student is comfortable with. Those events were a blast.)
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Yes later on we discovered that there were a number of parents, in our daughter’s social circles, who also were non-drinkers, didn’t feel comfortable attending those events. A couple of the parents were parents of international students and their culture just didn’t permit alcohol consumption.
Our eldest daughter is a combined electrical engineer/computer software engineer. She happens to be extremely social and she’s a manager. She purposely plans events that include everyone at her company.
When she was at her former company, the company rotated social events assignments to the managers because a number of the CS/engineers were “socially compromised” and it affected their communication skills on projects. Our daughter was assigned to plan a couple of social events a year.
You couldn’t get those people to attend anything, much less a bar event. But a number of her colleagues were drinkers and thought they were “cool” people who didn’t want dry events.
So she came up with a clever idea and she pitched it to her bosses and pitched it to local breweries, which San Diego is famous for now.
She booked a corner of a brewery and set it aside for her employees. She brought in popular adult-based game boards and rotated employees at the tables( think “cards against humanity” or “Telestrations”).
She had her company sponsor the non-drinkers, such that soft drinks, coffee, and flavored water (Gatorade) were free for the employees. Those that wanted to drink alcohol received an reduced rate at the bar, which was sponsored by the bar and not her company.
She said it turned out that the small group at the first event loved it so much they asked her to plan the next one. She also said that the heavy drinkers weren’t so heavy; they wanted the free soft drinks and Gatorade.
She planned the next event and by word of mouth from the first event, they had to book the whole brewery. Think Wednesday afternoon. The company was happy. The brewery was happy because they sold a lot of food at an off time and she was happy there was no pressure for people to drink.
I’m sorry this was off-topic but I had to mention it because this daughter is also a non-drinker. Our other Davis daughter, however, learned a lot at Napa.
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This is such a sweet story and so amazing of your D!
Yes, lots of workplaces are discovering that if the goal is employee engagement, the “open bar” concept is a turn-off for many people, even the drinkers. And board games, trivia nights, karaoke– all can be enjoyed dry, even by the folks who claim they can’t “relax” without a drink.
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My kiddo attends Whitman so there are no big football games! I’ve really enjoyed parents weekend because there are concerts (and my kid does a cappella and there is always a concert with all the different a cappella groups that weekend), along with low key athletics, and gorgeous fall weather and a pretty campus and great town. While the hotel prices do go up about 2-3 months before parents weekend, I booked both years 6-7 months in advance and the prices were equivalent to all other fall weekends.
My S23 is doing study abroad this semester, so this thread has me realizing there is only one more parent weekend left! 
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Thank you! Yes, she’s extremely creative and amazingly smart, but she’s caring too and she doesn’t permit exclusion of anyone.
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We didn’t go to parents weekend last year and won’t be going this year either…going a week before that instead. If the only parents weekend activities for my kid’s college only involved wine & cheese receptions where the ONLY beverage options were booze or water, I’d skip those events. Besides, I’m not especially interested in hanging out with a bunch of drunk adults who I don’t know anyway. 
Out of curiosity, I looked at the homecoming/parents weekend events for D24’s college for this year and it looks like they’ve got a pretty good range of things to choose from, like:
- homecoming football game & tailgating on Saturday
- ‘theater showcase’ Sat evening, original performances by theater students
- $30/person dinner buffet at a nice restaurant near the college on Sat evening
- alumni artist reception
- choir alumni practice for all of the choir alumni singing national anthem at the football game
- campus tours
- bounce houses & games for children
- tennis & soccer matches for tennis & soccer alumni
- 5k & 1 mile ‘fun runs’ - there’s nothing fun about that. After all, I’m allergic to running.
- pep rally Fri night + homecoming carnival
- couple of events geared toward current students, where a panel of alumni speak about how their college experience helped prepare them for jobs & life after college + how to take advantage of programs & services on campus to maximize those opportunities
- etc., etc.
Compared to the college I went to, where parents weekend involved a football game and some parents’ weekend BBQ and a wine & cheese reception…never went to any of that. My parents never came to parents weekend.
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We went to C24’s parent’s weekend at Oberlin last year. We probably won’t do it again, but there were some really nice things:
The good
- Got to see an opera on campus, which was cool.
- C24 was able to bring us to a run-through rehearsal for the play they were in. We didn’t see the actual performance, but at least got to see them act.
- Fall in OH is nice
- There are several decent hotels about a 15 minute drive to campus, and we were able to get a room at one of them.
- C24 volunteers at the kitten rescue on campus, so we were able to go and snuggle kittens
- C was so proud to show us around campus! They showed us all of their favorite places to hang out, and it was nice to see the ways in which they were making the campus their own.
The Bad
- apparently, nothing stops at school for Parent’s weekend, so C24 was BUSY! They had several activity-related meetings that weekend that they couldn’t skip, so we didn’t actually get to spend a ton of time with them.
- Oberlin’s a tiny town with only a handful of places to eat near campus. Waits were long, of course, all weekend.
Overall, I’m glad we went that once, but we probably won’t do it again.
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I have absolutely no memory of any type of parents’ weekend at my school (or anyone’s parents visiting at all except for graduation). Or football games, for that matter. Then again, I was not the type to attend them, and my school did not move to Div 1 athletics until a few years after my time there.
We went to parent’s weekend at each of my kid’s schools their freshman years. At D’s school every academic department held an open house and we went to the social sciences one (where D’s major was) and there wasn’t any wine or cheese. It was in the morning, so they had muffins, pastries, fruit, coffee, water, and tea.
Some other activities that you could do:
- Football game and tailgating
- A fair on the quad that included games, bounce houses, booths selling school merchandise, some local businesses had booths, food trucks.
- A play
- The orchestra and choir had a show
- Various lectures
- An international dinner in the cafeteria that included a raffle and casino games
- And as mentioned above each department held an open house
I didn’t see any wine and cheese anywhere…maybe it was there and we didn’t see it. At D’s school, it seems like most parents come for parent’s weekend their child’s freshman year and that’s it. D’s roommate’s parents came sophomore year for parent’s weekend, but they weren’t able to come freshman year.
At S’s school it was more or less the same. Various academic departments had receptions and open houses. We went to the one for S’s major and they had soda, water and sandwiches and salad set out for people to eat. Like D’s school, it seems that most parents only come to parent’s weekend their kid’s freshman year.
Some of the activities included:
-Football game
-Various department open houses and receptions
-Performances by the theater and music departments
- They also had a science fair, where the science departments and science clubs did rocket launches and had exhibits and science related activities you could do. They had a slime making table and some other stuff
-A dinner with the president of the university that also included a raffle and live music. You had to buy tickets to this.
-Themed dinner in the cafeteria
-A fair and BBQ on the quad