@shoremom22 I think many of the official campus lots are free over the weekend. So if he can park at a meter for a couple hours (until 9 or whenever the streets become free) then move to a campus lot, it may be nearly free.
ETA looks like the faculty lots are free after 4 pm and all weekend
If you’re interested in reading about the individual colleges and what’s in them (and their basements), you can check out the Yale College website (http://yalecollege.yale.edu/) and select any college from the dropdown menu at the lower right (the individual pages have sections discussing the facilities, which are pretty impressive). Each college has a buttery, which is a snack bar / lounge / hang-out, often open late at night. When you actually visit the colleges, you’ll need someone with a key card to let you in.
Thanks @donnaleighg ! I visited that link earlier today but skipped over the faculty/parking section. Looks like it will work out well!
Forgive me if this is old news, but my daughter heard (at Bulldog Days) that the Harvard-Yale game will be at Yale again this year since Harvard is renovating their stadium. Has anyone else heard this?
@Faulkner1897 According to the schedule on Harvard’s site , they are playing at Harvard …http://www.gocrimson.com/sports/fball/2016-17/schedule
A senior who will be playing football for Harvard next year also said that the game will be at Yale this year, and return to Harvard in 2017. However, both the Harvard and Yale schedules online indicate that the game will be played at Harvard on 11/19/16.
@ItsJustSchool A few others just responded with great answers but just in case you wanted me to answer…
There were plenty of upperclassmen that were showing students around and as a parent, they would have gladly given you a tour as well.
The buttery is like a cafe/lounge area in the basement of each residential college. The cafe opens later at night for students to purchase late night snacks and hang out. In the basement of each RC there are a series of corridors and rooms that house things like a theater, pottery studio, dance studio, kitchens, print shop etc… Each one has different things to offer and all students are welcome to use them. They are so amazing when you consider that they are technically in the basement of a dorm. When my kid was first accepted, we went to visit and explore and a friend of hers showed us around the different RC’s. Each dining hall and library was different. Each Buttery had so much to offer. It was the first time that I actually absorbed what made Yale different from all of the other schools we had visited. Yale literally encourages the use of really cool common areas and shared experiences. It is such a shame that they don’t show any of this during the official tour because it is in my opinion one of the things that sets Yale so far apart from everyone else.
Just can’t help but offer another point of view regarding parent/student togetherness at drop-off weekend/family weekend/The Game weekend. It’s true, SOME kids will ditch their parents in favor of their peers at these moments and others. But it’s also true that SOME kids will sense that opportunities with their families will be on the rare side and will treasure the togetherness. Both are within the realm of normal and healthy. You know your kid best and can anticipate what they will need and want. And it’s ok for you to want a little something, too.
@Faulkner1897 I was hoping that the rumors were true ,but was told by Yale Athletics office that the game will be at Harvard in November. We went to the game at the Yale Bowl this past November and had a great time. Guess we’ll have to wait for next year to do it again.
@tcb152 Thanks for investigating! It seemed weird that I hadn’t read anything about it on this board, which I consider to be one of the ultimate insider sources for most things Yale.
The Game at Harvard is definitely not as much fun for Yalies as if it is in New Haven. I would suggest you wait till Sophomore year to do the game. Also, by November, your daughter may very well not want you there as she will probably be going with whatever extracurricular group she belongs to (dance, acapella) or a group of friends to sleep on another student’s floor. That is the fun of The Game - parental units do not fit into that plan well. As close as I am to my D, she went with her dance group/friends and then caught the first train out of Cambridge right after the game and came home.
@Tperry1982 Thank you for the tips! I actually despise football and have no plans to ever go to the game, but I do love planning ahead and wanted to get my daughter’s plane ticket home on frequent flyer miles!
However, I am definitely going to listen to your advice and hold off on this until my daughter gets a feel for her activities and friend group, and whether she even wants to go to the game. Based on advice from this group, tickets home from Boston might be a good option when the game is in Cambridge.
@Faulkner1897 - you’re welcome
For those of you who have current students, what’s the vibe on campus regarding the Halloween email, “master” term and Calhoun College name? Just not sure the extent to which this is being blown up by media…
@tonymom - Oh, just a little question like that, huh? 
The short (and accurate) answer is that there are as many vibes as there are students on campus. I never hear about it from my son anymore, but he hasn’t felt the need to be involved in the discussion.
@tonymom, my sample (n=1) is that DS is too busy to take more than a moment to glance at this kind of thing. Some students seem to be more involved, but even they just finished classes and are preparing for exams, projects, papers, etc.
Again, based on my small sample, DS appreciates that he’s almost half finished with enjoying a great gift, one that many students would have also appreciated but that the numbers kept them from getting. That’s the signal, the other stuff is noise.
Ok, you know I am going to beg to differ. As an African American alum and mother of a current sophomore, there is definitely buzz about this on campus. Is it all encompassing? No. IxnayBob is right, there are finals and end of school year things going on so the kids are busy doing what they do best - studying and going about the business if being Yale students. But believe, the students and alum of color do see this as a slap in the face. Are we going to be vocal about it? Probably not. We are just resigned to the fact that the school that we love is rooted in the very real world of America and it is what it is and that some people just never will get it. My child was so wrapped up in classes and finals that she did not even know about the names until I asked her about it.
What is pissing alum and students off more than anything is the naming of one of the colleges after Benjamin Franklin for two reasons. If they did not want to change the name of Calhoun because keeping the name is a learning tool about America’s history of holding human beings as slaves, they dang shouldn’t have named another new college after another slave holder AND one who has little, if any, connection to Yale. He founded a rival Ivy and has plenty of buildings named after him on UPENNs campus. What parents should be up at arms about is the fact that naming the college after Ben is the direct result of the wishes of the alum that donated $250 million to build the new colleges. Now don’t get us wrong, if the money was tied to naming rights, then the University should have been upfront about it and not gone through the motions for the last year soliciting e-mails from alumni and students about the names. They should have said that one was already set and that one was up for discussion. We could have lived with that. Yale does not have a $27 billion endowment without genuflecting to donors. We all get that.
I am not sure if those parents on CC who are not alum were aware of all that was going on behind the scenes to name the colleges. Alumni were probably into it more than the students were. Are we glad that one of the colleges is named after a woman of color who has close ties to the University as well as being LGBTQ? Yes we are. We will accept the good with the bad and continue to hold up Yale as one of the best colleges in America and one of the best places to attend as a student. My views of that have not changed.
My sons experience is that there is more reaction to the retention of the Calhoun College name than any of the other issues. My sense is that there is a divide between alumni and current students on this and that the students are resisting the party line. Dean Holloway was very convincing, to me at least, on why the name should be retained at the convocation this year. I guess the students disagree.
My daughter has said that she simply respects all of the different causes that seem to buzz at one point or another whether or not its one that she believes in. But that there is always some person looking to create buzz and be heard be it racial issues, sexual assault, political positions or even the naming of the colleges. That is the nature of the intelligent and passionate students that Yale hoped to attract. I asked if there is tension and a dramatic vibe and she said no. For the most part people support each other or they just don’t get involved. Right now they are all up in arms over how silly it is that there was a big deal made about the process for selection and in the end there was one that was the two extremes of a politically correct decision and the other being money. She had sent me an article that was pretending to be written by Benjamin Franklin himself and I was in tears laughing. I think that the bigger issue for the students are the jokes that will be made about belonging to that particular college. Does the fact that the name Calhoun remains bother people? Yes, however as they explained at the convocation last year, Yale was also a slave owner… and that name isn’t changing either. Perhaps they should find some other Calhoun that deserves the honor or maybe even a very rich one and just transfer the title to their name instead. After all - it seems that you don’t have to actually attend Yale to have a college named after you. ha ha ha
I was surprised with the decision on retaining the Calhoun name, but I don’t know all the factors that went into that. For what it’s worth, Princeton and Oxford just did the same thing with regard to Woodrow Wilson and Cecil Rhodes.
One factor might have been something that Dean Holloway alluded to at the freshman convocation in the fall, i.e. potentially encouraging advocacy now and in the future, around renaming any number of other buildings and programs, once a precedent had been set with Calhoun. Those were not his exact words but that’s what I took to be one of the points he made.