My DD had a roommate who moved in with her BF, but kept her parents paying for her half of the room; that seemed to happen repeatedly with other friends, too.
I lived in a strict private dorm. Parents had the option of requiring their daughters to sign out if they left the dorm in the evening. They had to sign back in when they returned. My parents, strict as they were, didn’t take that option, but my roommate’s parents did. She solved the “problem” by just avoiding the dorm altogether! She would stay away for days at a time, leaving in the afternoon so she didn’t have to sign out.
Thing is, your college dorm is a sort of community. You don’t track people, expect them to reveal everything about their schedules, they may not even be friends. But if your own roommate disappears, but 90% of their stuff is there- and for weeks- there’s enough reason to mention it to the RA. If you think the RA is a mindless kid, go to the housing office. They know what kids can get up to, when to take action, how to check with profs or use of the meal card, etc.
Frankly, it’s what we’d want, if our kid went missing. Or had serious issues. And if this turns out to be “nothing,” fine. It doesn’t matter to me whether you learn the full story. But teaching our kids when to show concern- and how- is a life lesson.
Adding…the RA is your student go to person. But every dorm should also have a residence life director or resident director who is a college employee adult.
I was an RA back in the Stone Age when privacy laws weren’t quite as in the forefront. Even then…and I’m talking over 40 years ago, we were not permitted to give any personal information out to other students at all. But we could let a roommate know not to worry if they inquired. Or we could refer them to the resident director.
Given the number of posters with similar stories, it seems this behavior is not that rare in colleges. Yes, it would be good if roomates had the common courtesy to inform others if they were leaving for an extended time, and it would be good if roomates mentioned to an RA that a roommate had been missing for an extended time, but courtesy appears in short supply these days. At least in the vast majority of cases, it appears there is nothing untoward to worry about.
UPDATE, son finally started asking around and turns out the kid went home for a family emergency but no one bothered to tell son and to be fair, he didn’t bother to ask… due partly to an exaggerated sense of personal privacy and partly plain boneheadedness. No one knows if he’s coming back or not.
I wouldn’t have wanted to live with the guy but I can only imagine things are bad at home to miss a month of school and midterms. That is always sad and hopefully don’t derail college for the young person.
Whew! Thanks for the update.
@turtletime Yes, thanks for the update! I suspected it must have been something like that, because the school almost certainly would have inquired with your son if the roommate had simply vanished.
Thanks for updating!
Hope whatever the emergency is is resolved. Thanks fo the update.
Reminds me of two roommates during my freshman year of college who decided not to return to school after Christmas break. Their parents dropped them off at the Syracuse, New York bus station to get back to school. Instead they went to Interstate 81 on ramp & hitchhiked a ride south. The first car (van) that picked them up gave them a 1600 mile ride to Key West, Florida where they stayed for a few months digging for oysters or clams. No one knew where they were until about 6 or 8 weeks later when they called home.
Family emergency is also a polite way to not discuss any specifics.
@Publisher "No one knew where they were ". Cruel. Unnecessary worry, resources potentially used to locate these roommates. Selfish comes to mind. Where are they now? Are they still jerks? If they have children themselves, I doubt they would want to be treated that way!
@sevmom What I got from that story was the importance of letting the student “drive” the college process. Otherwise, crazy things like this can happen. True, they were (still are?) “jerks”, but they were also legally adults.
Sorry, a mature, legal adult does not act that way. I’m clearly missing something. 
Not mature, agreed.
If someone at work got up, left their stuff and didn’t return for six weeks you wouldn’t mention it to anyone? This is ludicrous. No one is saying we have sway over the adult student’s decision. Or following up on a few nights at a girlfriends dorm. This story is a kid left and left all his belongings for weeks.
What in the world does it have to do with boundaries and being an adult?
Instead of a family emergency it could have been another kind of emergency.
@privatebanker Was this in reference to my comment? I wasn’t defending the clam-digging students at all, I was just saying that @Publisher 's story was a reminder of what can happen if the student isn’t happy. Better for the parents that they decided to build sand castles in the Florida Keys for a couple months instead of killing themselves.
@damon30 No. The thread in general. Good lord, if my kid up and left like this I would be outraged at the school If no one inquired because they are 18, versus six months earlier. And I don’t care if they didn’t like my daughter. Basic human kindness.
All they would say is it’s ok and they had a family emergency, whatever. Not that they walked off into the woods drunk or were abducted or worse. Done.
Many times students are thousand of miles from home or don’t have family situations where people are checking in on them.
This is not rocket science. Three days under these circumstances, max, before I reached out.
@privatebanker Ok. I kind of suspect that both the roommate’s parents and the school knew what was going on. The only one who didn’t was the OP’s son. I’m not 100% on this, but that’s what I got from the OP’s update.