Is it a request for information, with a whole bunch of rhetoric added to make if more confusing? Or is it the text of a speech, telling them what your concerns are, with some rhetorical questions?
If it’s the first, cut out the rhetoric and just ask the questions.
If it’s the second, well written, but a bit long for me.
Ah, you’ve waited on my mom… “Now, if the sweet potato fries are limp… are they limp?..it’s probably because they’re fried in hydrogenated oil. I just don’t digest sweet potato fries the way I should. Ever since I turned… well, the decade I’m in. So if they’re limp… would you call them limp?.. I’ll eat them all, I can’t stop, but I’ll call you when I’m up at 3 am. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like all types of fries. Well, I like them, but they just don’t like me…”
But I agree. I’d have the daughter send a short question.
I teach college freshmen, and when I get an email from a parent, I reply that in my experience when the parents speak for their student, the student eventually ends up bailing out. And I say “So, in hopes of helping your student grow up, I didn’t read your email. Sorry! But tell your son/daughter I’ll watch for theirs and reply immediately.”
This post nails it.
They already know your concerns but unfortunately they can’t read the future. You want answers that no one has.
I’m embarrassed for you, that you’re writing and not the student. They might be willing to engage with a student over these concerns. But a helicoptering parent looking for ‘hard answers’ that flat out don’t exist? I very much doubt they currently have time to engage with you if it’s not self evident they don’t yet have answers to these questions.
Everybody’s normal has been disrupted. What will happen? HOW will it work out? You’re just gonna have to do the same as everyone else, be calm and wait and see. A few weeks or months from now answers will come.
Yes, it sucks to not know. Everybody is in the same boat, it’s unsettling, but manageable if you make an effort.
TLDR. Jeebus. All it needs is a reference to your political party and a mention of the designated hitter rule to be complete.
Manda JO nailed it. My son is starting college this year too, and we discussed this matter last night. We agreed that we’re just going to have to wait and see.
I have a few friends who are professors, and they have talked about how much they hate direct communication from students’ parents, because people over 18 have confidentiality, and they are not allowed to discuss the situation of someone 18 or older with their parents without a signed waiver.
I realize you are asking only for general information, not anything specific about your daughter, but because parent communications are a “trigger” for a lot of academics, I strongly suggest you reword this so that it could either come from all of you, or your daughter alone. Sign it appropriately.
Or of course, not send it at all, as others have urged, but I’m advising on the assumption, that you won’t take that advice even if it’s shoved-- that you won’t take it.
Parents communicating with professors directly, such as over grades or student performance, is completely different situation from the OP’s.
I wouldn’t consider it embarrassing at all for a parent of a new student to contact administration over administrative matters such as those the OP is writing about.
This is not anywhere near the same ballpark as a parent contacting a professor over classroom matters.
In my experience, what is normal is for both parents and the kid to be involved. The kid should be at the very least cc’d on the conversation. Having them cut out entirely, as if they aren’t mature enough to be part of the conversation, is unusual and suggests a certain over-involvement of the parent.
What’s embarrassing is acting like potentially paying $300K makes you a Gold Card customer who deserve special treatment. Yes, it’s a shit ton of money, but it’s the same shit ton of money everyone affluent pays, and what a “selective” school means is “lots more people want to pay all this money than we can accept”. So if you want to take your money and go home, they don’t care.
Again, nothing wrong with the questions–as long as you recognize that they may not have answers. But “I DEMAND you answer these questions and in care you haven’t heard about it, let me explain that there’s pandemic” is humorously pretentious.
LOL @ all of y’all.
I got answers. The Universities are on top of this more than y’all are and more on top of it than you think they are. All five universities have answered, and they’ve all (largely) given me the same answers.
I don’t understand the hostility - don’t y’all, as families, work together? But that’s OK. I have a high school senior who is more concerned about her prom than the Fall of 2021, and that’s fine - I’ll handle the grown up stuff as parents are expected to.
It sounds like they all sent the same stock reply they sent to every parent who wrote to them.
My point was that parent communications push buttons for academics.
Yup.
It is a letter from someone who is in the process of spending a great deal of money for a valuable service, asking what will happen to the money if the service is not rendered. It is fully appropriate that the letter be written by the person who is spending the money.
And yes, the answer will probably be “we don’t have a plan yet” (albeit, not phrased that way). But if they get enough such letters, they might realize that they had darned well better come up with a plan. And yes, there are a lot of uncertainties involved. That means that they need a plan with contingencies in it.
You have two question #10s.
The questions you asked were reasonable. Your presentation on the state of the pandemic makes you kinda look like an ass. I’m sure you wanted to give the impression that you’re not some silly chicken little but you went waaaay too far.
A university administration staffer isn’t in an “academic” position. E’s in an administrative position and should be able to keep es cool when faced with a question about administrative issues by a paying client.
Now I’m taking this is a very exclusive private school, but can they take any classes online?
I mean freshman year is basically all intro courses anyways.
I’ve decided to quit pushing my son to attend an out of state school and I’m fine if he takes classes locally. Many of them online.
Even the ones who futilely pepper correspondence with new pronouns that they have invented hoping that they will catch on? Because there is cool, and there then there is “submerged in liquid nitrogen”…
The person who provides the money isn’t necessarily the client- if I make my mother’s car payment they aren’t going to discuss her account with me. I paid my kids’ tuition and at no point did I sign any sort of agreement with the college to pay it* . I very much doubt that any university or college keeps a record of whose name was on a tuition check and in any event it doesn’t appear that the OP has paid anything yet , so I’m not sure how the colleges are expected to know that he is going to be paying anything toward the tuition. Sure, it’s unlikely that a freshman right out of high school is paying tuition out of money she earned, but she could have inherited money or her grandparents could be paying.
I was wondering why I was hearing Ascenray’s post in a Cockney accent.
That was on purpose? Boo, Ascenray. Booooo.
This is all pointless line-drawing. It’s common sense that in all but extraordinary cases, the parents of a high school student who is a prospective college student are literally in loco parent is to someone who is still a child and that the parent is effectively a client. Any college administrator who looks askance at an inquiry like this from a parent is being an unreasonable ass.
I’ll note that the OP’s question didn’t require any disclosure of personal information.