In a NYT Opinion piece, Jennifer Weiner shared the joys and fears of dropping her younger daughter at college to start her freshman year.
Parents of incoming freshmen at every school get versions of the same emails: about scheduling your kid’s move-in time and filling out forms for the health center and making sure to buy the extra-long sheets.
Parents of daughters get an extra assignment. It isn’t written down, but we all know what it is. In between buying shower caddies and LED lights, we have to give our girls a refresher course on Rape Prevention 101. Don’t leave your drink unattended at a party. Don’t walk home late at night by yourself. Make sure someone knows where you are. Watch out for your friends.
When it came time to say goodbye and leave her daughter in her dorm room (bed made, clothes unpacked), Weiner reflected on the milestone of the moment:
“Make good choices!” I called. I drove home, a little sad, mostly proud, thinking: My work here is done. I knew it wasn’t really true — she’ll still come home on breaks, and she’ll still need me — but it was a milestone. My kind, smart, big-hearted daughter was ready to spread her wings, ready to meet all the people and do all the things.
Weiner’s topic in the opinion piece wasn’t just another sharing of the emotions many of us feel when we drop a child off at college. Her bigger concern–and the point of her column–was the anger she felt about the Cornell rape accusation, the botching of the investigation into it and how far we have not come in protecting young women since Weiner was a college student.
For women who’d gone to college decades ago, the ones who’d spent their undergraduate years marching and protesting and signing petitions and occupying buildings — the ones, that is, like me — the fury was laced with a kind of bewildered exhaustion. How is this still happening? Shouldn’t things be better by now? How could all of our activism have brought about so little change?
Painting: Paul Gauguin
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