Parents and Ethics

Mood: drained

Chocolate or Vanilla: in regards to ice cream or pudding, definitely vanilla...but I love Austrian chocolate :)


I think we should send parents through a mandatory ethics course when their children come to college. Seriously, sometimes I just can't believe the things these parents say. It does explain their children's behaviors though.

In the past few weeks, I've had some "interesting" parent phone call. First there was one from a mom, who wanted me to move out her son's roommate because her son thinks that the roommate is gay. Besides the fact that this student has not come out to anyone and there is absolutely no reason to assume that he is gay, this is clearly discrimination. So I explained to mother in a very nice and patient way that at our institution we do not move students based on sexual orientation because that would be discrimination. The mother continued to insist that nobody should have to live with someone who identifies as gay and even hinted that I may not be "typical."
Way to go, mom...let's all teach our children how to discriminate! I mean, I'm not saying I'm perfect...I have my own issues and may not be as open-minded toward every single social group...but if someone clearly explains to me that something I'm suggesting is discrimination, I would at least hesitate for a second and re-evaluate my request.
But not this lovely mom. I even suggested that if there were certain behaviors that made the student uncomfortable, we could address these behaviors (while on the inside, I was boiling and would have loved nothing more than to hang up), but oh no, that wasn't enough.

And then today...another fabulous parent phone call. This mother was complaining that her student was documented for an incident and now had to attend a substance abuse course and pay for that course. The mother seemed to be under the impression that her son had been drinking outside of the residence hall and then just came back intoxicated (which in itself is a violation...he's not 21!!!). In reality (which of course I couldn't say), the student had been caught smoking marihuana in the building and had also been found with paraphenalia.
So I explained to the mom how our judicial process works. At my institution, I actually don't deal with alcohol or drug violations, but those are taken care off through our Judicial Office. So all my staff and I did was document the incident. And between us, the student was lucky that he didn't get arrested! Because he should have been but the police decided to turn the case over to the RAs (which they definitely shouldn't have...but that's a whole other story).
So here were the mom's "ethical" suggestions:
1) Since my staff only "catches" those studens who violate policies before 2 am (my staff stops doing rounds at 2 am), we shouldn't document those students because the really "bad kids" don't come back until 3:30 or 4 am.
2) And after I explained that my staff and I don't assign charges or decide sanctions in these cases, she suggested we should have just not turned in the documentations.
How's that for ethical???

Seriously, what are you teaching your children???