Shootin' down the helicopter

Another school year is fast approaching. Orientation is drawing soon-to-be-freshmen and their families onto campus -- their faces sporting expressions ranging from excitement, to apprehension, to possible zombification (sometimes in rapid sequence). And, this time around, a new phrase hangs over the whole of the proceedings: "helicopter parents." \nWuzzat, you ask? Well, talk has been growing in academic circles about baby boomer parents' growing intervention in the lives of their college-age children. Advances in communication technology -- particularly cell phones and the Internet -- have made it considerably easier for kids and parents to stay in constant, immediate contact. At the same time, tuition costs keep rising, while college degrees (and the type of degree), become ever more critical for one's future earnings. All this leads parents to feel that there's a need to protect their investment -- not to mention giving them an increased sense that they are customers, ones who college officials better bloody well serve. \nAnd then there's the nature of boomer parents' pre-college involvement with their children. In interviewing Jeanna Mastrodicasa, a University of Florida official and co-author of a book on boomers and their kids, the St. Petersburg Times writes: "They saw their youngsters as 'special,' and they sheltered them ... They insisted their children wear bicycle helmets, knee pads and elbow guards. They scheduled children's every hour with organized extracurricular activities. They led the PTA and developed best-friend-like relationships with their children..." (June 19).\nThe result? Parents have taken to hovering (like helicopters) over students' lives -- taking a direct role in everything from course selection, to interactions with professors, to roommate squabbles, to doing laundry. Some parents even do their children's homework for them. \nAnd as the Indiana Daily Student chronicled in its 2006 Orienter magazine, IU's orientation has been heavily influenced by the attempt to get the helicopter to, at least, hover a little farther away. Worried about the impact on students' development -- and over-zealous parents pestering profs and administrators -- the University has gone so far as to coach moms and dads on how to hold less-invasive long-distance telephone \nconversations.\nWe here at the IDS can't offer anything akin to the advice of the trained professionals involved in IU's orientation -- but we would like to add one idea. \nTo all you boomer parents out there: take a good look around you. Whatever your circumstances, you made it -- you have been successful enough to send your kid to college. All this, despite being a baby boomer -- the generation best known for getting ripped on many assorted chemicals and walking around barefoot, talking to trees and magic pixies. The generation known for campus riots, punk rock and celebrity serial killers. The generation that came up with free love, and the yuppie lifestyle, and Screaming Yellow Zonkers and all sorts of unhealthy things. \nWith all due respect, then, if you guys can make it -- your children certainly can.\nOr, to put it in more familiar terms -- trust in the words of The Who: "The kids are alright"