No matter how you personally feel about it, your daughter is going to be away from you and your influence is going to be greatly limited. I'd suggest using the time well teaching her how to make wise decisions on her own rather than attempting to mandate specifics about her college experience.
Yeah-- make no mistake, I'm wise to turning this one into a power struggle, knowing my daughter. I'll bite my tongue so hard it bleeds if that is what it takes here. Since she's attending the local institution, and will be a 15yo managing a life-threatening and very volatile disabling medical condition, she
won't be living away from home in any event-- at least not the first two or three years. She knows this and is okay with it.
I'm merely wondering if there is something that I'm
not seeing-- if so, then I'm willing to learn and revise my rhetoric/tone with my DD accordingly.
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Also-- indigo, please realize that this is a PG kiddo and that there are a LOT of layers of consideration that
aren't about being PG or asynchronous, even-- stuff that I don't always post here (see note above about disability issue). Secondly, some of the posts alluded to are
years in the past. {Side note: it's been my experience elsewhere that many parents of younger kids find such an 'arc' of posting to be VERY helpful as a kind of roadmap for themselves... I've been the recipient of that kind of help here and elsewhere, ergo-- I pay it forward.}
I first began reading here when my DD was about nine years old, and posting when she was just 11 and (at the time) in existential/school-precipitated crisis. Most of the things that I've posted over the years have been speculative-- hunting
ideas to deal with a particular thorny problem, or seeking alternative perspectives. Not drama. Similarly, not looking for drama here, either-- more trying to find out if there is something that I've
not already considered.
So far, it seems not.
This is a flagship public university, and the campus is not overwhelmingly Greek-- she will be in the honors cohort, which is about 1/30th the size of the larger university in which it is housed. Unclear what the rate of Greek participation is within that smaller cohort, but I'm guessing it's not that high. There is definitely a party-culture here surrounding the Greek houses off-campus, and police incidents are definitely
not rare. Mostly that seems to involve frats, though, not the sororities-- but-- it's also hard to tease apart, and as is typical for a campus like this, I strongly suspect that a lot of what goes on never makes the public police blotter at all.
My biggest concern re: Greek culture here is that it is also
rape culture. This is a campus which is not that dissimilar to the one that I attended for grad school (but with slightly lower Greek participation) and the sorority girls that I encountered there while TA-ing and teaching... make me want to throw my body between that system and my DD, quite frankly-- and would, even if she were 18. THAT campus has made the news quite regularly, and Greek row has, on occasion involved riot squads and letters to alums offering apologies for the horrible publicity.
This ain't Mount Holyoke, let's just say.
