SHOULD PARENTS JOIN KIDS AT COLLEGE ORIENTATION?

I just spent two days with my daughter at a University of Georgia freshmen orientation and shared the travails of elevated dorm beds on Facebook. I expected ribbing about my ungainly attempts to hoist myself up and over the guardrail, but instead met with a spirited debate about whether parents even should accompany teens to college orientation in the first place.

Some people were unaware that most colleges now invite parents to orientation and create extensive programming for them. Others felt parents at orientation undermined the independence that college was supposed to develop in students. (I was four floors away from my daughter in her dorm. She roomed with a student from New Jersey who came sans parents but with precise instructions on where to go and when. In fact, we relied on all her mother’s reconnaissance to get places.)

My own parents were minimalists who only showed up for school graduations or command performances. I adhered to that model until I heard one too many times from my oldest daughter, “I was the only one there without a parent.”

This was my first college orientation — I didn’t go with my older two children. Now, I am adding that omission to my long reel of parental blunders.

There is a lot to navigate and figure out, especially at a big public university with nearly 36,000 undergrads and graduate students. (UGA is experiencing such a surge in enrollment that it’s offering Athens-area freshmen $1,000 to give up their dorm beds and stay at home and $3,500 to upperclassmen to cancel their university housing contracts and go off-campus.)

It is helpful to have another point of view and someone on hand with ready cash, as there were ID cards and placement tests that can’t be billed to student accounts.

UGA earns accolades for its carefully curated two-day orientation sessions attended each time by around 300 students and their entourages, including grandparents, younger siblings and older brothers. At the dozens of panels and presentations, they learn how to call the Dawgs, they watch spoken word

Georgia Tech freshmen and parents attend an ice cream social as part of an orientation. Parents can help their kids navigate the huge amount of information the colleges provide.