Crazy story. A young woman at Stanford who had the misfortune to be the daughter of someone who writes for the National Review lived in a co-ed room in a co-op she had chosen to live in. Predictably, the mother freaked and wrote about it in NRO, because what better way to communicate with your children than by humiliating them in front of thousands of strangers? As you would expect, the article was filled with inaccuracies. The parents also stopped paying for the daughter’s tuition (so the daughter took out a loan in order to graduate).
This got picked up by the NYT blog “The Choice”. The daughter wrote into the comments to explain her side and outline the inaccuracies in the NRO piece:
7. This conflict has very little to do with Stanford and gender-neutral housing. Is has everything to do with my parents having a hard time adjusting to the fact that I’m out of the house (I’m the oldest), I’m 3000 miles away, and *especially* that I’m a liberal agnostic while they are conservative Catholics. The NR really should have looked into this situation a little bit before publishing that article.
I can’t believe I’m having to write this in the NYT blog. This is ridiculous.
Now, of course the parents are entitled to their own beliefs about their daughter’s living arrangements. And, since it’s their money, they’re entitled to stop paying her intuition tuition if they so choose.
But why do so many conservatives view their children not as beloved family members but as tools with which to prove their own conservative bona fides? Is this style of parenting something that Edmund Burke recommended or what?
(h/t Rottenchester, who emailed this story to me)
DecidedFenceSitter
Gut reaction? Fear – they fear what might happen to their darling child; they fear that she’ll fall farther away from the faith (whether political or religious). For them, it would be little difference if she was openly proud of doing illegal activities.
I’m amused as I did room with two women my sophomore year in off-campus housing; all I got out of it was the knowledge that yeah, rooming with friends is the best way to be out two friends.
KP
Strong. Family. Values.
Laura W
Love the stop paying her intuition!!
Daughter’s, also. (2nd time used.)
Leave intuition. I love it.
4tehlulz
Children are property and are to be treated as such.
greynoldsct00
Obviously their views are more important to them than their own child… it’s shocking the bad behavior that people stoop to in the name of religion… especially when that religion would never advocate said behavior…
gwangung
The daughter has her head screwed on. Glad that the alma mater is producing folks with a big helping of common sense…
Krista
Heh — good for the daughter. Her response is excellent and it sounds like she’s got a good head on her shoulders. I lived on a co-ed floor when in university, and my mother was very upset that I hadn’t chosen to live in the all-girls’ dorm. I countered with “Mom, if some lunatic breaks into the dorm and tries to hurt me, would you rather I be surrounded by a bunch of shrieking girls, or by a bunch of guys who view me as something akin to a sister?”
I didn’t tell her that the bathrooms were also co-ed. She didn’t need to know that.
NonyNony
Ah – family values. Wonderful.
At least the daughter seems to have some perspective on the whole thing. I think I’d be fairly pissed off if my mother or father were airing their grievances about my lifestyle choices in a public forum like NRO.[*] I mean, really, why not just get into a screaming match about this stuff over the Thanksgiving dinner table like normal families do? Do you really feel like you have to publicly tell the world about every part of your daughter’s life you have an issue with? Seriously? All it does is make you look like an asshole – especially when the daughter in question is 22 years old.
[*] I’d actually be more disappointed than angry with my parents if I caught either one of them writing for NRO. Couldn’t they find a more reputable journal of opinion to write for? Like the Hustler letters column or a bathroom stall in some gas station somewhere?
Xel
The skepticism (or, far too commonly, fear) of change?
I read a debate between animation aficionados regarding the differences between American cartoons/children’s television in comparison with European content.
The basic trend was that most American television was meant to insulate and perpetuate the mores, tropes and level of innocence of the age group, while the European equivalents were more suggestive, multi-leveled and diverse in aesthetics, sacrificing immediate understanding while intending to prepare the specific age group for the next step in the development of looking at oneself and society.
Watching Swedish television for children while growing up I often remember being either confounded or unpleasantly jolted by the level of threat or seriousness present. Still, I was intrigued and interested in preparing myself for this next step. Today, Swedish people my age are generally extremely fucking depressed. I am more prone to blame horrible weather and nihilism.
Michael
Alan Keyes would be proud.
Remember his daughter, Maya? And how his expenditure sheet showed large amounts of money paid to her friend who outed her?
mmiddle
For some parents, their children are no more than conversational fodder for bonding with their audience (known and unknown). Like playing with dolls.
Bill E Pilgrim
So your daughter gets into Stanford, putting her into the top gazillionth percentile of students, the rest of whom would give anything for that start in life, and you refuse to pay her tuition because you want to throw a tantrum about sleeping arrangements?
I mean, you’d ruin her academic career at its start on the top rungs of our system, pretty much assuring her a brilliant chance of succeeding at whatever she does, because something offends your prudery?
Good for the daughter for taking out a loan and making it work. What an amazing example of the child having an infinitely more mature perspective than the supposed adults.
The Grand Panjandrum
The very next comment in the NYT blog was a gem as well:
There endeth the lesson.
TheFountainHead - 'Easily Led'
This should make for a very comfortable Christmas.
Tithonia
I wish someone would pay my intuition.
MattF
Wingnut or not, it’s painful for many parents when they realize they’ve lost control of their child. I’m not condoning it, I’m just saying that this sounds like a fairly classic family drama that’s being played out in public rather than a political item.
gwangung
@Bill E Pilgrim:
And, to top it off, you whine about it to the entire nation–and get a smack down because of it.
John Cole
Permanently stuck in 1950.
NonyNony
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I’m actually fairly surprised that so many parents of college aged kids don’t seem to remember what they were like when they were in the 18-22 age bracket themselves. Or maybe they DO remember what they were like and are petrified that their baby is going to be like them.
I guess I’ll revisit this question when my kid is old enough to go to college.
DougJ
I agree. I blame the parents for writing about it in public, not for having the reaction that they did.
Evinfuilt
Children are their parents tools, or their awards. My parents were so proud of me, the main fixture of conversations. But once I outed myself, I was disowned, I’m not spoken of and people who they spoke to more often knew something right away happened, even if my parents refused to acknowledge any of the sort.
She should be proud that her parents let her go and told people of such. At least they’re admitting their foolishness (even if they don’t realize it.)
Last comment, its always something that bring the parents “shame”, doesn’t matter what, religious, political, something. Something the parents are embarrassed and ashamed of, that they could do it better somehow. My non-religious parents were shamed of who I am, so out I go. Her conservative parents shamed of their liberal daughter, out she goes. No more trophy daughter to support and brag about.
Tom65
The daughter should consider herself lucky – fifty years ago, her parents would have packed her off to a convent.
Michael D.
It’s not a conservative thing, Doug. Liberal parents routinely trot their kids out into the public to prove political points as well.
Charity
Does this young lady have a Paypal account where I can help chip in for her loan payments? I’d actually get a good return on my investment.
TheFountainHead - 'Easily Led'
This is true. Which is why I believe there’s only one philosophy of parenting to espouse, and that’s Parenting via Benign Neglect.
Stabetha
I lived in a coed dorm at the US Frickin’ Air Force Academy! If it’s good enough for the US military, shouldn’t it be good enough for the conservatives? I actually thought coed dorms were the norm these days…
Off topic, but while over at Freeptardville, I found a post and I couldn’t tell if it was parody or not. Can you guys help me out? I’m not sure if one of you guys is trolling them or not…
joes527
While the whole “do as I say or your father and I will cut you off” melodrama was childish … in the long term it is a good thing.
Parents paying adult children’s expenses as a way to keep them under their thumb is way too common. As hard as it is, the best thing for the adult child is to embrace the situation and pick up the “adult” part. No need for hard feelings, threats or screaming fits. Just a simple “Thanks for getting me this far. I’ve got it from here” is fine.
It sounds like that’s what happened in this case. (Except for the whole NRO tantrum (But have a little empathy. Parents put 15 – 20 years (yes, it starts before birth) into raising a kid. Don’t be surprised when the transition to a different relationship is hard on the parent))
Children are not property.
Parents do not owe children 4 years at Stanford.
Ned R.
@NonyNony:
I’ve always wondered that myself. Amnesia can’t set in THAT much, can it?
(Then again, maybe they’re just jealous of their kids for all we know.)
Graeme
This strikes me as the same childish nonsense that came to the fore during the Bush Administration.
I remember all the lectures on morality and fiscal responsibility I willingly received from the GOP during the Clinton years. I was a true believer.
Until they did far, far worse and tried to play the IOKIYAR card.
Now I see them for the stunted hypocrites they really are. This is all about loss of control. As usual, the wingnut parents would rather point fingers and cut off their daughter than work together, communicate, and agree to disagree on issues that DO NOT HAVE ANY IMPACT on their relationship with their daughter.
As others have pointed out, graduating from Stanford is a win, even with a major in film. This kid will be fine.
I just hope the parents have the good sense to look back on this one day and feel shame.
Tsulagi
The one thing, and I believe the only thing, I give the mentally challenged and incompetent Cheney is that he didn’t turn his back on his lesbian daughter to please or appease the Bible humpers in The Base. Even when she and her partner decided to have a child. Hard to say, but good on you, Dick.
Xel
#25
My so-called dad tried that. I’ve recently cut all ties with him seeing as how I just realized he got to have a kid (by his definition) but I didn’t get to have a father (by anyone’s definition).
aimai
Tom @ 26 makes a good point. Its pretty clear from the NRO piece that the parents are really, really, angry that what they thought was a contractual arrangement between parent and Stanford was actually a contractual arrangement between Stanford and the daughter that excluded them. They (and some of the commenters) kept bleating about how “unfair” it was that they were paying and not getting full control over the daughter. Like full information. Well, this is a very well understood part of the transition between childhood and adulthood and believe me Universities explain it very slowly to parents. You may, or may not, choose to pay for your child’s education but you can’t buy the private information of another adult. This comes up all the time with mental health and grade issues. Just because you are paying the freakin’ tab doesn’t mean you can call up the faculty advisor or the health services and violate your child’s privacy rights.
They thought they were sending her to a finishing school with an even better degree at the end. Instead it turns out they were sending her to an actual modern university where the sleeping arrangements are made by actual adults. Where you are sleeping and who you are sleeping with turns out to be *not the whole point* of the four years of college. Its actually besides the point. Unless you are a religious nut.
aimai
Bubblegum Tate
My sentiments exactly.
sgwhiteinfla
The NYTimes blog now has a new post with the daughter’s side of things based on that comment in the first thread.
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/a-daughter-responds/
fester
Hell, sharing a small 1 bedroom apartment with a good female friend my senior year was probably one of the smartest things I’ve ever done before proposing to my wife! Living with a woman that I cared about but was not sleeping with was an eye-opener on all of those little assumptions that I never knew I made on a routine basis. Plus her raised eyebrow and WTF moments definately improved my date-ability (plus the fact that she had plenty of hot friends and she was willing to vouch for the fact that I was not an asshole) — wonderful time!
PiledHighandDeep
No, parents do not owe children 4 years at Stanford, but can’t we agree they do owe it to them to discuss such disputes in private? It sucks for their daughter that they felt the need to embarrass their kid in the name of “warning other parents.”
Most parents I know realize that colleges don’t work in loco parentis anymore. As the other commenter said, you raise them, you set them loose on the world and hope for the best.
aimai
I think its a spoof. This is a description of a spa vacation.
aimai
SGEW
Just jumping in to say that’s a magnificent post title.
DougJ ain’t afraid of no Woolf.
TheFountainHead - 'Easily Led'
@Xel: I think you misinterpret me. I meant merely that parents ought to know when they need to parent and when they don’t.
Capri
It’s not a liberal or conservative thing – it’s an American culture thing. Parents are judged for every choice they do or do not make from the time their children are born until they are somewhere in their mid-twenties.
And the metric that is used is how the child “turns out” – sort of like a tin of muffins. {As in, “I was raised on Kool-aid and hot dogs and I turned out OK”}. The lady at Stanford didn’t “turn out” in a way that reflected her parents values and shamed them in front of their peers. This brings into question every thing they ever did – length of breast feeding, getting into the the right kindergarden, allowing candy before meals, dictating modest dress in middle school, whether she was allowed to go to the after-after-prom. It’s all in there.
Writing about it for the world to see is just crappy. But the feelings that something your 20-year-old daughter does reflects on everything you did from Day 1 on is shared broadly. Which is why I suspect the Mom reacted so strongly.
MBunge
The mom has a perfectly legitimate complaint in that it seems like Stanford is allowing a situation to exist in which people can feel pressured into living arangements they’re not comfortable with. If anything seriously untoward happens in one of those “winked at” co-ed set ups, Stanford is going to be paying off a huge lawsuit.
However, the most important part of the story is that the daughter is a senior with only one quarter left in school and Mom is quite clearly unable to handle that.
Mike
Jamey
To the author of the NRO piece, I offer the following piece of advice:
Get a Brain, Morin!
Bob In Pacifica
There is a strange need by some to have a political litmus test as a prerequisite for family harmony. Having been the leftist (since the sixties) in a family of Republicans I’ve found that the best thing is to avoid discussing these things. Sometimes the issue is forced.
After a recent family reunion I mentioned on my blog having to leave the room and get a stiff scotch when my sister, repeating what she’d just heard on Fox News, said in a panic that Obama was going to raise all our taxes. Later she was bent out of shape that I’d mentioned it in my blog. In our ensuing exchange of emails Father Coughlin came up and she informed me that Coughlin was a “socialist/progressive” who was “instrumental” in getting FDR elected.
Now my sister’s not dumb at all, but there is a whole universe of disinformation being fed to people and the intention is to change history so that the liars’ current vision of reality isn’t exposed for the lie that vision is.
Luckily, I’m long past my tuition getting cut off (I finished my college on the GI Bill anyway, back when the GI Bill was good). I think this girl’s parents have only ensured one less place setting will be needed for Thanksgiving this year.
gwangung
Yeah, I feel sorry for her having such absolute morons as parents.
grendelkhan
No, they don’t. But they do owe their adult children some degree of autonomy. They’d already agreed to send her to Stanford for four years; this was not about her demanding anything from her folks, it was about sanctioning her for disobedience, for not turning out to be the kind of person they desired. Yanking her chain like that was a profoundly mean and controlling thing to do, and in the end, it didn’t even stop her from finishing her education in the disapproved manner.
But on the other hand, I can see parents with any political views turning their back on their children because they do something terrible–violent crime, for example. If your wacky system of morality (the one that “nurtured millions of people for thousands of years [and] produced great men and women”) declares that being gay, or even failing to uphold the same standards of separation of the sexes, is just as bad… well, I suppose I can see how they got there.
The fault, then, lies in the moral system that demands this sort of strict adherence to ridiculous and frequently bigoted codes of behavior. The parents’ reaction makes sense, but having it in response to this particular provocation–I hesitate to even use the word–is grotesque.
Man, I’m glad I had liberal parents. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if they’d demanded authoritarian respect and obedience from me. I suppose things would be similar; I just wouldn’t talk to them any more.
gwangung
Since this is not the case, the mom HAS NO COMPLAINT.
comrade thalarctos
My undergrad college had officially-sanctioned co-ed rooms, and mostly no-one thought it was such a big deal.
This was in 1980. Twenty. Nine. Years. Ago.
How about we all grow up and join the 21st century, or at least the twentieth?
YellowJournalism
Hell, my dorm bathroom was co-ed, and it wasn’t even a co-ed dorm!
The definition of akward is when you’re shampooing your hair, you start to hear moans coming from the shower stall next to you, and you realize that there are three sets of feet at the bottom of it.
Tom65
I wonder if the parents have told the daughter about her arranged marriage yet.
NonyNony
@Stabetha:
The parent in question was actually complaining about a co-ed room not a co-ed dorm. Which is a bit different than a co-ed dorm. I knew kids in college whose parents couldn’t even get past the idea of a co-ed dorm – they probably would have freaked the hell out at the thought of a co-ed room.
But really, it comes down to “do you trust your kid to make good decisions or not?”. If so, there’s no problem – she’ll make the choices that she makes. If not, then you have a much bigger problem than your daughter choosing to live in a co-ed room.
More importantly for me, it also comes down to “am I the kind of asshole who broadcasts my displeasure with my child’s choices to the world via a column on the Internet?” We’re not talking about a comment in some forum somewhere, we’re talking about a parent being a public asshole about their child’s life choices. I know we’ll never run out of assholes on the Internet, but really, is that necessary? Or even entertaining?
MBunge
“Since this is not the case, the mom HAS NO COMPLAINT.”
That’s like saying you shouldn’t be worried about someone randomly firing a gun into crowds until somebody actually gets shot.
Mike
John Cole
@Bob In Pacifica: The GI Bill was ok for me in 1992. Should be much better now that we just passed a new bill making it even better.
Danton
My God! Your kid manages to get into one of the best universities in the country–a university that has to turn away thousands of qualified applicants every year–and seems to be thriving, and the parents response is to cut the kid’s tuition because of they live in a facility that resembles the sort of apartment building set up she might live in after graduation! I can’t believe it!
A friend of our daughter’s got accepted to Wesleyan in CT and the father announced to the kid, “Great being accepted, now you have to pay for it, because it builds character.” This, from an extremely wealthy business owner who pays a 10K fee to golf at a private club. Meanwhile, we borrow at exorbitant rates to send our daughter (and come fall, our son, too) to some outstanding liberal arts colleges back east BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT PARENTS DO!
Please excuse my tirade…
Senyordave
Her mother wrote this without at least telling her daughter in advance? She must have very little repsect for her. I think the whole episode says a lot about the character of her mother.
Hunter Gathers
@NonyNony:
Unfortunately, this is nothing new.
JC
My parents are both conservative Catholics, but they never forced their politics on my brother or me. For some reason, we both grew up as liberals. Now my brother’s become really active with college democrats, and they’re actually proud of him for being active, even though their politics no longer match.
I can’t imagine our folks would have reacted this way if either of us were in a similar situation. Private, gentle disapproval, lately, but not this hissy-fit, temper tantrum. Maybe these parents are just really insecure.
TheFountainHead - 'Easily Led'
I fail to see how this is at all the case.
joes527
OK. I 100% agree that taking the argument to NRO was a bad thing.
But I’m a little taken aback at how little slack is getting cut for the parents.
They did something stupid. Big deal. People do stupid things all the time. When you are older than 10, you should realize that YOUR parents do stupid things all the time. When you are older than 15, then you should realize that YOU do stupid things all the time.
The responses in this thread are way beyond “boy, that was a dumb thing to do” and well into “the parents are morons.” I think that folks underestimate how hard it is to raise kids and not end up being a moron from time to time.
r€nato
Sam the Joe the Plumber is leaving the GOP.
grendelkhan
This. I wish I’d had the chance to live with a female roommate before I moved in with a partner. I ended up learning the hard way that it doesn’t matter if the mess doesn’t bother me; it’s still going to get cleaned up, and if I don’t do it–or don’t do it without being nagged–I’m being an insufferable jerk, and it will come back to me.
Quoted for truth. This was beautifully put; thank you. My thoughts exactly.
Hell, I’m throwing in ducats to help my partner complete school right now, and it wasn’t that hard for me to understand that this doesn’t entitle me to pick the major.
TheFountainHead - 'Easily Led'
Dumb was getting upset in the first place. They skulked into “moron” territory when the mother decided to make hay out of it.
Blue Neponset
I am never going to forgive myself for going to a “tech” Univeristy. It was a god damn sausage fest.
babieca
@Charity
This woman has already gotten so much better of a start than the vast majority of young people in this country. The extra $3000 loan she took out won’t be an issue for her (financially).
Why not donate to the AICF or UNCF or something similar in her name/honor/cause you want to? It will make so much more of a difference in those young people’s lives and you’ll get a hell of a return on that investment too.
JL
Now both mother and daughter are discussing their feelings over at the NYTimes.
Meanwhile, the comment posted tonight by Karin Morin begins:
I had not idea that transparency meant that you had to share all details of your life.
Martin
It’s called the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). It was passed following the Patty Hearst situation when the media got a lot of their information out of her college (UCLA, IIRC). And California has even more strict laws regarding the student’s rights – and UC even stricter policies. It’s been like this for almost 40 years now.
Bottom line is that once you send your kid to college, even if they aren’t yet 18, they are considered emancipated and parents have about as much real control and access to their kid as they do to everyone else’s kid. It doesn’t matter who pays the tuition, the only people that get access to student information is the student, unless they waive that in writing.
Mnemosyne
@Michael D.:
That reminds me of David Sedaris’ “Santaland Diaries,” where a mother makes her 4- or 5-year-old child tell Santa that what he wants for Christmas is for Procter & Gamble to stop torturing animals in their labs. I mean, WTF is wrong with you that you would do that to your poor kid?
Martin
I picked a private college with a 7:1 female to male ratio that was out in the weeds. Priorities, my boy. Priorities.
Joshua Norton
What right wingers do best is rewrite or skip entirely over large chunks of history that don’t coincide with their fantasy view of the world.
Then a few generations later, they try to take all the bows for the things that have happened to better us all and that their ideology bitterly opposed at the time.
NonyNony
@joes527:
Perhaps. But this is one of those cases where the parents are being morons and deserve to be castigated for it.
Yeah, it’s hard to raise a kid and not do something moronic from time to time. But when you do, you should be called out by the folks who know about it for being a moron. The only way human beings learn is by feedback.
Also – if the parent in question hadn’t written a column for a public, international website about her displeasure at her daughter’s lifestyle choice then no one would be castigating her. Simple causality. It wasn’t the daughter who took the family laundry to the public and waved it around, it was the mother. And anyone who holds up something that they’ve done and proclaims “look at this wonderful thing I’ve done” brings the castigation onto themselves when then “wonderful thing they’ve done” is totally fucking stupid. The really fucking stupid thing here wasn’t cutting the daughter off, it was publicly airing it and expecting people to approve of what she’d done. THAT’S the big reason she’s getting such a harsh reaction here. When I do something stupid with regards to raising my kid, I try to keep in on the down-low so that I only get yelled at about it by the handful of people who know what I’ve done. I don’t rush to my Facebook page to let everyone know I’m an idiot. If I did, I’d expect exactly the same reaction people are giving this parent.
MBunge
“I fail to see how this is at all the case.”
If you read the mom’s article, Stanford is essentially turning a blind eye to students setting up their own living arangements in college dorms, even when such arangements don’t conform to written school policy. The mom’s daughter missed a meeting and ended up assigned to a co-ed room, something she didn’t request and didn’t really want.
Now, in this case, the young woman in question doesn’t appear to mind the situation that much and is also a senior with just one quarter left before graduation, so the mom should know enough to back off.
However, it doesn’t require a lot of thought to see how this sort of thing can go bad fairly easily.
Mike
MNPundit
@NonyNony: Speak for yourself, when my mother was in college she was a religious prude.
Charity
The deal my parents made with me (in 1989) was: If I got into a 4-year college, they would pay for it. It was not Stanford, but a perfectly fine small liberal arts college 3 hours away from our Bucks County, PA, home. With my grades I got a presidential scholarship all 4 years, which helped them quite a bit.
That was the entire contract. There were no qualifications sprung on me at the last minute. There was no input from them on housing decisions. And when my political/religious leanings turned away from theirs, there were no threats of withdrawing tuition.
And they certainly didn’t write about it to all their friends, neighbors and any passersby.
Senyordave
My guess is that the mother will regret this (and maybe has already regretted it) very much. If my parents ever aired a family matter in public in this fashion I would have trouble ever trusting them again.
The mother is scoring points with her conservative friends at the expense of her relationship with her daughter. Great parenting skills, mom. Did you learn them from some of the wingnuts at the NRO?
Blue Neponset
I got into and passed on a college that was on Playboy’s top ten party schools list too. I wish I had my priorities straight back then.
r€nato
@4tehlulz:
you would not believe how often I heard that when I was a child. All the time, as a matter of fact.
Steve
I’m open to the possibility that some of the misstatements in the parents’ article aren’t really their fault. It’s entirely possible that the kid sorta led them to believe that the situation was being forced on her, as opposed to admitting that she voluntarily chose this living arrangement that she knew her parents would be upset about.
It’s sorta like, did the GOP lie in the campaign about Levi and Bristol getting married, or is it maybe possible that Bristol said at some point, “Don’t worry, mom, we’re totally getting married”? Couldn’t tell ya.
tavella
The somewhat amusing thing is that she’s still pro-life (unless there are two Daisy Morins currently at Stanford), which is the sort of thing you’d think conservative Catholic parents would care more about. Picking a fight with her over petty living arrangements and trying to manipulate her and lie about it to the public is the sort of thing that would drive her even farther away from their philosophy.
But that’s conservatives for you; instead of going “my daughter is going to graduate from a top-flight university! She’s a devoted pro-life activist! I’m so proud of her!” it’s all “oh my god, BOYS! There might be SEX! Live in a convent like I want or I’m CUTTING YOU OFF!”
An Alumni
Delurking to clarify given MBunge’s comment:
“The mom has a perfectly legitimate complaint in that it seems like Stanford is allowing a situation to exist in which people can feel pressured into living arangements they’re not comfortable with. If anything seriously untoward happens in one of those “winked at” co-ed set ups, Stanford is going to be paying off a huge lawsuit.”
As you will see if you peruse the comments on the NYT blogs from alumni, living in a co-op is completely voluntary (I’m an ’86 graduate, and these options were available then also). There are only a handful of these type of houses on campus, and you have to seek out the experience by making it an option before the housing lottery that determines dorm assignments each year. Living arrangements can be changed upon request at *any* dorm, not just co-ops, if the student feels uncomfortable. There’s no “winking” at the process inside the co-ops – students have to tour the houses and be informed about the house norms before the housing draw.
It is impossible that she was forced or pressured into a co-ed room. Simply didn’t happen.
Much ado about nothing.
Love the blog.
Senyordave
It’s sorta like, did the GOP lie in the campaign about Levi and Bristol getting married, or is it maybe possible that Bristol said at some point, “Don’t worry, mom, we’re totally getting married”? Couldn’t tell ya.
Judging by the way palin used her kids as campaign props (her younger daughter traveled with her and didn’t even attend school during the campaign, didn’t even wait until she was 16 to drop out like the other Palin kids), its probably reasonable to assume that Bristol Palin’s thoughts were not considered.
Krista
Sorry ’bout that – we didn’t realize the other stall was occupied.
grendelkhan
While I certainly did enjoy learning all of my technical subjects, I also am in possession of a t-shirt that reads: “I come from [campus area], home of single-sex dorms and engineers. Buy me a drink and I’m yours.”
I suppose going to state school on scholarship made me very conscious that I was there to train myself, not to spend time faffing about drinking and wasting time. Then again, I should have considered that I would have the rest of my damned life to go to work and worry about bills.
Ah, well. You clambers up into your middle class, you takes your chances.
Eh. The school I went to was, I think, one of those schools. I, and plenty of the other engineering students, just treated it like a monastery.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@r€nato:
Where’s he gonna go?
TheFountainHead - 'Easily Led'
Not enforcing a policy is a far cry from forcing kids to live in a co-ed situation. If the kid made ANY kind of stink about it, said policy would immediately be enforced to avoid any sort of litigation.
tavella
Which is why Stanford is entirely open to reassigning rooms if there is any issue. Which there wasn’t, because the woman in question was just fine with it. Mom wanted to spy on and control her daughter’s life, Stanford declined to assist her, she whined about it in NR.
TheFountainHead - 'Easily Led'
P.S. I suspect based on anecdotal evidence and my own experiences, that the reason these housing policies often go unenforced is because most Universities want to avoid a loud version of the, “If my gay friend can live with his boyfriend, why can’t I?” debate.
Persia
@MBunge: MBunge, these comments would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that so many women get sexually assaulted on campuses every year. Whether the rooms or dorms are co-ed makes no difference, and never has.
fester
@Blue Neponset
As an alum of CMU, I share your pain.
However think about the comparative advantage and availability angle when the common saying among the female students was “The odds are good, but the goods are odd…”
A male did not have to be significantly not-odd to have good odds of getting laid. You know the basics (daily showers, an ability to talk about something other than Quake or the comparative advantages of C++, Java and PERL, not farting noticably in public, willing to wear a tie without wearing jeans…) were quite an advantage when in normal situations, that does not distinguish one from the baseline population at all.
Throw in the fact that female students at CMU were just as busy as the male students so their search opportunities were fairly restricted — it was just a matter of comparative advantage within a constrained environment…..
MBunge
“Living arrangements can be changed upon request at any dorm, not just co-ops, if the student feels uncomfortable.”
Yes, and as we all know, young people in college are NEVER pressured into doing stupid or unfortunate things that turn out badly for them.
Ye gods.
Mike
The Other Steve
I went to Iowa State back in the late 1980s it was around 70% male, 30% female. It’s like 56/44 now…. still not even, but better.
I’m totally with you on that. I didn’t realize just how much of a freaking sucky life that would be at the time I signed up.
Michael
Stabetha
Insufficiently wingnut Heather Wilson lived across the corridor from me over in Vandenburg Hall.
David Hunt
You should not make comments like that during working hours. I almost choked trying not to laugh out loud.
Win.
SnarkIntern
You can’t pick your parents, as they say.
Mine stopped paying for my college tuituion … or anything else … when I turned 18 as a way to push me into the educational and career path they thought was best for me. I resisted and did something completely different. Got a job to pay my own way, and never took any support from the parental units again.
I have never regretted the move, and shudder to think what might have been had I followed their path.
What I really marvel at now is that we live in a world where a fairly commonplace story like the one at the top of this thread can be turned into a political tableau. As if it were the politics, and not the relationship stuff, that really matters here.
r€nato
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Away, I hope.
Sez he’s leaving the GOP because they are big spenders but he’s against cuts in defense, Social Security and Medicare.
I wonder how the fine folks at PJTV are feeling about this as well as all the Republican operatives and politicians who thought having him as a mascot was such a brilliant idea.
low-tech cyclist
Sure, they had the right to stop paying tuition, but unless the daughter had good reason to believe that participating in a living situation like this was the sort of choice that would cause her parents to revoke their tuition support, then they were being jerks.
If their understanding was no more complicated than “study hard, make good grades, and we’ll pay your tuition,” then they broke an implied promise to their daughter, and they should be ashamed of themselves for welshing on their commitment.
And then bragging about it in public. Sheesh.
geg6
@MBunge:
All I can say is that you obviously have no contact or interaction with college students. Students do this stuff ALL THE TIME. And the universities have about as much say so in the matter as the parents do. Which is nil. Unless someone snitches. Which is a rare, rare, rare event. Hell, we had someone who was taking a dump on people’s dorm room doorsteps all year and, regardless of how much it disgusted them, we couldn’t get a single student to rat the culprit out.
An Alumni
Yes, and as we all know, young people in college are NEVER pressured into doing stupid or unfortunate things that turn out badly for them.
Ye gods.
Mike
People of all ages are pressured into doing stupid or unfortunate things that turn out badly for them (usually, during college, at events with free alcohol, not at room assignment meetings). I don’t see how that fact is relevant to this specific situation, given the facts as stated by the student – who is not even a minor – herself.
You are, of course, entitled to your own opinion.
Best Regards
Jay in Oregon
@r€nato:
C’mon, don’t tease like that. Source? My Google, she has nothingk for me.
kid bitzer
pssst! don’t nobody tell john, but ramps is the new arugula!
http://food.theatlantic.com/home-cooking/ramps-the-true-sign-of-spring.php
we always knew that w.v. good ole’ boy line was just a cover-story for his insufferable coastal elitism.
r€nato
@Jay in Oregon:
it’s over at TPM.
LD50
After this family precedent, I hate to imagine the kind of shit Karen Morin will dump on her next daughter when she goes to college.
gwangung
Ye gods. And young people are never known to SEEK OUT such a situation as Daisy did? And are quite happy with them?
You’re making idiotic, ill-informed statements here when you’re not distorting them.
YellowJournalism
Oh my God! Standford actually let adults make their own decisions about their living arrangements, despite a possibly outdated written policy?! And they even made her face the consequences of her actions after she missed the meeting? Bastards.
That’s okay, you gotta get your sex education somewhere!
Opie Curious
@MBunge: But hold on. First off, it’s what the mom says happened. I agree with Steve that she may have let her parents believe this, so I don’t blame the mother for being upset in the first place. But it’s clearly not the case that the daughter was unhappy about it.
Second, when she decided it wasn’t a big enough problem to rock the boat because she had missed the meeting — both of which were acts of her own agency — it does not follow that it was okay to punish her. Again, 18-22 year olds are learning to be adults, and they should be commended for actively making decisions on their own. Even when those decisions are mistakes, students making their own choices will be much better prepared for adult lives than those who simply continue to follow the prescriptions and proscriptions of their parents. Parents have to allow this for their children to actually become adults.
Cutting off her tuition was a mean-spirited thing to do. When she took to the NYT comments section to defend herself later, she treated it as a case of parents not knowing what the schools are doing. Fine, but that’s not why she cut her daughter off. It wasn’t that she no longer wanted to give the school money; if her daughter had chosen to find a way around the policy, she wouldn’t have withheld tuition even though the policy still existed in the first place. She would have paid. It was only when her daughter thought the result was, in fact, acceptable that she stopped paying.
The mother wasn’t obligated in the first place to pay college tuition if she felt her daughter should pay, but she clearly didn’t think that, as evidenced by the first 11 quarters of college that she paid for. Nor is she obligated to pay for a room situation she doesn’t like. But cutting off tuition because room was unacceptable doesn’t follow. This was, through and through, punishing her daughter for being an adult rather than forcing/allowing her daughter to deal with the adult consequences of adult decisions. To my mind, punishing adult behavior is about the worst thing a parent can do to someone who’s left the nest.
That she then went out of her way to call out her daughter in a magazine is awful. She could have easily written about the general experience of the housing policy — which would still have been risible, and many liberals probably would have made fun of her anyway — without punishing her daughter’s agency or bragging about doing so. But she did do that, and that’s makes it disgusting on top of being mean.
In other words, no, I have no sympathy for the parents here.
gwangung
And she really didn’t care about having a co-ed room?
Double bastards.
Jay in Oregon
Found it:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/joe-the-plumber—-quitting-the-gop.php
Edit: And again r€nato beats me to it.
aimai
Mbunge:
But if you cared to read the entire interaction with the daughter you would know that that is an out and out lie.
The “written school policy” was not violated because the daughter intended to be assigned to a co-ed grouping. She missed the meeting but sent a proxy. Her proxy chose wisely and she *did not, in fact, object* to her living arrangements. This has nothing to do with Stanford’s written policy as was clear from the get go. The mother is either lying or delusional since instead of admitting that her daughter had no problem with the situation, the university was in fact very flexible in offering to change the situation if it wasn’t working out, and etc… the mother choose to cut off funding for her daughter.
You know what? As a mother it really wouldn’t be my choice to think my daughter was in an unsafe living situation and unfund her so she has no choice but to rely on her new friends. This has nothing to do with physical safety, and the mother admits as much. She has a heightened sense of moral sexual panic and assumes that all male/female relationships will end up including sex and that is her primary fear. If she gave a flying fuck about her daughter as a human being she would never have postured and preened in that NRO piece, and she certainly wouldn’t have cut off the miserable funding.
As a mother I have no hesitation in declaring this woman an absolute piece of shit as a human being. Really, there’s no excuse for it. Jesus fucking christ was more compassionate to the woman taken in adultery than this bitch is to a daughter who occasionally sees a guy in his underwear.
aimai
grendelkhan
@LD50: I foresee four sparkling years at BJU.
DougJ
The definition of awkward is when you’re shampooing your hair, you start to hear moans coming from the shower stall next to you, and you realize that there are three sets of feet at the bottom of it.
No, the definition of awkward is when you’re in an airport bathroom, you start to hear moans coming from the stall next to you, and you realize that there are three sets of feet tapping at the bottom of it.
SnarkIntern
Sorry, had to clip that, my shriek filter was kicking in.
Congratulations, Doug. You’ve turned Bj away from being just a pet forum into its true destiny, a sewing circle with plenty-o-gossip.
Good work.
Church Lady
What Martin said. When our daughter started college, the University made it very clear at the parents’ orientation meeting that their contract was with the student, not the parent. We would not be privy to our daughter’s grades unless she signed a waiver. She was responsible for signing her housing contract, not us. Bills for tuition, housing and other expenses would be addressed to her, not to us. The school didn’t care who actually paid the bills – as far as they were concerned, she was the responsible party.
A very small defense for the parents: They were very well within their rights to refuse to pay the tuition. Their daughter could have changed to a room type more in line with her parents’ wishes and continued receiving financial help from her parents. She chose not to. End of story.
If it was my daughter, I wouldn’t have withheld financial assistence over this. I figure that if she’s going to have sex with someone, her living arrangements probably aren’t going to factor into that decision. However, I have to plead guilty to a degree of parental control. I hate, hate, hate tatoos. I think that while possibly cool in your twenties, it’s something many will greatly regret in their forties and beyond. We have told both our kids that if they want to get tatooed (or get assorted body piercings), they have to wait until after they graduate from college, unless they’d like to fund their own educations. Petty? Probably. But within my perogative.
tc125231
gwangung
And since they whined about it in a national forum, I think it’s perfectly fine for the rest of us to tell them what we think of what they did.
WATB, the both of them. Their daughter was a hell of a lot more mature than they were.
SnarkIntern
Welcome to the Jerry Springer People’s Court of blogs!
Next, two brothers, rivals for the same girlfriend, get into a fight with the third man who got her pregnant.
Who gets the bragging rights in this deal? Coming up!
tavella
Has MBunge been a troll all along and I just didn’t notice? Because the willful misunderstanding here is verging on trollish.
To get a co-ed room, Daisy had to go to a great deal of effort; first to pick the co-op system (voluntary), then to pick one of the two houses that do co-ed rooms (voluntary), and then to send a proxy to the meeting with the instructions that she was fine with a co-ed room.
She was not pressured; by her own testimony, she had a great time, loved her roommates, and the only stress she had was having to suddenly come up with $3000 dollars on short notice to graduate, because her parents cut her off.
gwangung
Uh, weren’t we doing this already?
YellowJournalism
And sometimes that in and of itself is the best form of birth control. Nothing more of a turn-off than some guy wandering around in faded Budweiser boxers that have a hole in the ass.
Krista
That’s the crux of the matter. Contretemps like this happen all the time between children and their parents, regardless of whether the parents are contributing in any way to their offspring’s food, housing, etc.
It’s the airing of this spat in a national publication that makes the parents look like petty idiots who care more about their conservative bona fides than in actually resolving this issue with their kid.
SnarkIntern
@gwangung:
{ finger to lips }
Shh.
Krista
No kidding. I didn’t get involved with any of the guys in my dorm. Not only would it have been awkward (rather like hooking up with a coworker), but after a few months, you’ve all seen each other at your absolute worst, and pretty much any frisson of sexual tension is long gone. There are always exceptions, of course, but I can only think of one of my girlfriends who dated someone from within her dorm (and even he was on a different floor).
LD50
Hey! Some of us cherish the backyard fence that is Balloon Juice!
MNPundit
@r€nato: Parents forget this ends at 18.
tc125231
@Krista:
:
It’s the airing of this spat in a national publication that makes the parents look like petty idiots who care more about their conservative bona fides than in actually resolving this issue with their kid.
No shit, Sherlock!
I have three grown children. The behavior of these parents is unbelievable.
What a piece of work they are.
wasabi gasp
This story has its own unique bent and my initial reaction would be to slam it with snark, but in general I think many parent-child relationships across all demographics experience this kind of thing.
SnarkIntern
@LD50:
Ah, the backyard fence. The alley where Hank Hill, Dale Gribble, Dauterive and Boomhauer hang out.
I think I will be Kahn Souphanousinphone, then.
Common Sense
Clearly you have never been to Texas Tech. Yes it’s in the middle of nowhere, but it is majority female and a huge party school.
timb
@joes527: Hey, Joe, not sure when the last time you checked out college costs was, but, as someone finishes graduate school and facing a daughter going to college in about 7 years, I don’t want them graduating with crushing debt. Graduating and getting a 25,000 job (clearly my kids aren’t Stanford kids), while owing 100,000 for an undergrad degree (and private interest rates, since Stafford loans pay a whole 2600 per year) is a staggering debt. I hope somehow I can keep my kids from being awash in debt before they are dumb enough to have children of their own.
Svensker
@NonyNony:
I remember. Boy, do I remember. What I can remember, that is. Which is why the freak out.
I don’t blame the parents for freaking — mine did. Horribly. But they should NEVER have done it in public. They’ll be lucky if the kid ever speaks to them again.
Church Lady
FWIW, 2008/09 tuition at Stanford is $12,010 per quarter. The daughter having to take out a $3K loan to pay for her final quarter doesn’t seem like that much of a crushing burden. Mom and Dad had already ponied up for the previous three years and two quarters.
Jay B.
@aimai:
Speak for yourself!
I’m with the once-wise David Mamet. When asked about his time at Goddard College, he responded, “You mean sex camp?” God Bless the University of Texas.
Brett
The difficulty here is that the parents are morons on principle, in public, as an ideological matter, which they have made into a focal point for their own (very public) lives. I have some understanding for, but little sympathy for, parents who let their existential fears and subsequent authoritarian religious tendencies turn them into little tyrants in the home.
Mnemosyne
Having grown up with controlling (but less assholish) parents, I can exactly picture the sequence of events:
Parents find out about living arrangements and demand that daughter moves. Daughter refuses.
Parents cut off tuition. Daughter takes out loan.
Parents publish article to try and publicly embarrass daughter into doing what they want. Daughter, rightly, refuses.
Basically, the parents are pissed off that their child isn’t listening to them anymore, and they are going to keep escalating to try and get that control back until they succeed in completely alienating her, assuming they haven’t managed that already. I’m fully expecting Mom (and probably Dad) to show up on Fox News and the Sunday talk shows to air this family laundry now that Daughter has dared to push back in public as well. At this point, it’s far more important for the parents to win than for them to continue to have a good relationship with their child.
gwangung
Even less for trumpeting that moron-ness in public and trying to blame their cluelessness on a third party.
canuckistani
@Krista:
Hey! That was you? That damned clown mask – I can never see any faces through the eye holes.
qwerty42
@Stabetha:
I wish you had included the link. I have passed this valuable information to the research team at Wonkette (well, the commenters, anyway).
Mnemosyne
@Church Lady:
I think you misread that (or mistyped) — it’s $12,010 per year, not per quarter, so the $3,000 makes sense as the tuition for a single quarter. Not a crushing burden, but I could see it being annoying to have to scramble to put the money together at the last minute.
gwangung
@Mnemosyne: No, that’s per quarter…I don’t think Stanford’s tuition has been as low as $12K per year since the mid 80s….
Church Lady
@Mnemosyne – No, that’s per quarter. i.e., over $36K per year. Got it right off Stanford’s website. As I said, the 3K loan isn’t a drop in the bucket compared to what Mom and Dad have already shelled out for their baby’s years at Stanford.
aimai
I don’t think its the end of the world for this girl to have to dig up 3000.00 dollars at the drop of a hat to finish her degree. But I also don’t think Church lady’s bitchy “drop in the bucket compared to what mom and dad h ave already shelled out for their baby’s years at Stanford…” has to say to anything. Maybe its a cultural/religious difference but where I come from its a parent’s duty to try to help their kid get a good start in life, as good or better than what the parents got, and the amount of money is really irrelevant. You aren’t buying control over the child–you *owe* it to the child just like you owe them food and clothing and medical care.
This girls mother, at least, had an ivy education and a Harvard Law Degree. A Stanford degree is just the family standard, the basics. At any rate, the whole thing is beyond shabby and silly. I think it struck me especially hard because the mother is local to me and now I’ve seen her name I suspect I’ll run into her one day. Hopefully I won’t have forgotten this story and I can tell her what I think of her to her face. I have no doubt that she is regretting her post right about now precisely because she imagined it wouldn’t go viral and it never occured to her that she might run in to any but firm supporters of NRO/Catholic league hysteria.
aimai
tavella
Actually, the $3000 indicates that in fact, Mom and Dad weren’t “paying her way”; she was paying three quarters of her tuition, through whatever combination of loans and scholarships (and possibly Stanford tuition forgiveness; they will scale their tuition to some degree for a middle-income family, and entirely forgive it for low-income ones). Given that the federal guidelines for loans require a “family” contribution, _even if the child is no longer being supported_, unless a child is married or 25, what happened was that Mom and Dad welched on their share and forced her to pay both theirs and hers.
So they can take their “morality” and shove it.
Cerberus
I think it basically highlights two things:
1) There are a number of parents out there who believe their children are possessions not human beings. We see it play out in that forming your own life stage in late high school, early college, but the undertones seem to be unfortunately common. I blame our culture for telling new parents that their life ends once they have kids and that parents aren’t supposed to have lives.
2) College costs need to be changed. Not only is it unfair for class stratification purposes, but more often than not, it’s used against middle class and upper class children as well to extend control to psycho parents like these to bully their kids into “locking” them into the same narrow-minded lives they lead. Kids and young adults should be allowed to explore and find themselves and college should have openings to do that without leaving the parents a means to punish their children.
The wingnuts love the current system because they view their children as property that also serve as proof of their holiness and have an incredibly narrow idea of “acceptable” life as well as a dread fear that exposure to reality will undo all their insane lies. I’m also convinced that they are intensely jealous of their kids, especially when they stray for having the life they denied themselves in service to wingnuttia. That’s not to say there aren’t stupid or malevolent liberal or conservative parents, only that these issues are ultra-magnified in wingnutville.
Xanthippas
I’ll give them more credit than that. If my son grew up to be a right-winger I’d be tempted to air it out in a “where did I go wrong?” column at The Nation, but then I would stop myself because I’m not a douche. So basically I think the biggest flaw in the parents here is that they’re jerks, but that’s a fairly common flaw in parents of all political inclinations.
Joey Maloney
@Krista:
Middle niece told me the kids today even have a name for this: dormcest.
gwangung
Well, they’re still whining about it, and trying to palm off their lack of imagination on a third party (i.e., Stanford).
All I can say is, tough. It’s their daughter’s education (Daisy’s), it’s where she lives and if they think she’s not likely to have a platonic apartment/housemate in the future (like, possibly, three months from now), then they’re being REALLY stupid and naive.
Joel
Cmon, tell me that the NRO writer doesn’t look like the loving, tolerant, type.
(Third from the left)
http://www.cardinalseansblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/wali_06_img_2459.jpg
Nylund
This lady better hope she never needs her daughter to help pay any nursing home bills when she’s elderly. Especially if she keeps alienating her daughter like she is.
“What mom? You need hospice care? Well, get a loan!”
Ed Drone
Actually, it’s more like 1958 — more tension, more change in the air, more worries. Other’n that, though, fairly accurate.
Ed
Scott
The thing that gets me is that they’ve decided they’d rather whine about it in a national publication than have any sort of relationship with their daughter. Because if their daughter’s smart, she’ll never have any contact with those poisonous parents of hers again. Send ’em a Christmas card every year and say, “Doing great, got a promotion, husband’s doing well. Had a second kid, who you’ll never see, you vile, backstabbing worms.”
The rest of the kids are probably thinking the same thing. “I’d better make sure I have some way to pay for school when Mom and Dad decide to use me for an object lesson for the freepers…”
asiangrrlMN
Very sad. I agree that this is played out in families everywhere, but to me, it goes beyond jerky and straight into unacceptable the minute the mom wrote about it for national publication. It seems that Daisy is the adult one in that family.
P.S. I would have to agree that living with someone in a non-romantic situation is the easiest way to get over any kind of attraction.
Darkrose
Okay, I call bullshit on the parents.
The only dorms at Stanford that have co-ed rooms are co-ops. You have to choose to live in a co-op–even if you do poorly in the housing draw, you’ll end up in one of the big concrete blocks like Wilbur or Stern Halls. If their daughter was in a co-op, it’s because she listed it on her draw option. And nobody does that without first visiting the house in question. Their daughter made a conscious decision (which adults do sometimes) and ResEd has nothing to do with it.
Goddamn, I hate helicopter parents.
Darkrose
Hmm. Now I wonder how fast her mother’s head would have spun if she was living in, say, Ujamaa, the black theme dorm.