The University of Richmond Collegian 10/06/94

Staff Editorial

by Jeffrey Carl, Opinion Editor

What We Think

an Opinion from the Collegian Staff

“Seeing the ‘Rents”

It seems that it’s Family Weekend once again at the University of Richmond. Hundreds of homesick students will see their parents and open their care packages and pick on their younger siblings and complain about the D-Hall with their families. Others will spend a day frantically vacuuming floors and throwing out empty bottles of Wild Turkey and unidentified underwear. Still others will frantically try to get reservations at “nice” restaurants so they can sponge a quality meal off of their parents before the parents leave and the students go back to eating macaroni and cheese.

But still there are those of us who will feel like orphans this weekend because our parents couldn’t make it. We weekend orphans have some advantages – we can have as bad a hangover as we want on Saturday, and nobody’s going to find out any of the disgusting cute little pet names that our parents call us (“help us unload the car, Jeffro-bunny.”)

No-nickname advantages aside, this weekend does really belong to the families, some of whom are seeing each other for the first time since moving out of the nest. So enjoy the weekend. Go to tailgate. Take them to see the play, “Under Milkwood.” Hear the Octaves and the Sirens. Try L & N Seafood over on Broad Street. Walk around the lake. Smuggle them on to the safety shuttle. See if they get carded up at the Row. Get them to write papers for you. Steal their car and go on a looting spree. Make the most out of the weekend.

No matter how you got along with your parents during high school – or didn’t – you find that things change in your relationship in college. College is the last stop before the real world, and your parents – who have had a job of making you into an adult for the last 20 years or so – are getting laid off. Show them they’ve done a good job at it. Indulge the too-many smiling pictures in the dorm room, excuse the comments about the dirty laundry and the endless asking “where’s the bathroom?” and have a good time on equal footing with the people who are learning now to change from your parents to your friends.

Keep in mind that these people are also forking over about $17,000 per year to the University, so be sure to show them the impressive-looking Jepson building. And treat them to Miller this weekend instead of Beast.