Parents Protesting Colleges' Reactions to Campus Tensions

College students' parents are protesting schools' reactions to mass demonstrations on their campuses, and are demanding that more be done to keep their young adults safe, in class, and learning.

In some cases, the parents are demanding tuition refunds and threatening to pull back any further financial support, reports The Wall Street Journal.

"They are not getting the education they expected and paid for," Zev Gewurz, a Boston real-estate lawyer and parent of a daughter who is a senior this year at Barnard College in New York City.

Gewurz said his daughter was to give a public presentation of her final thesis this week and attend a luncheon, but both events were canceled, as were her in-person classes.

He added that he's writing a letter to Barnard's president to criticize what he calls the school's inadequate response to hate speech, and said he texts his daughter several times every day.

Still, some parents are questioning the value of a college education, let alone the price tag, considering the tuition to attend an Ivy League school costs an average of $90,000 a year.

The protests are also causing colleges to cancel their graduations, coming just four years after the graduating students had their educations disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

One parent, Sarah Fanning, said her daughter was taking a final exam at the same time some of her peers were arrested in an encampment at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

"To charge them with trespassing when they pay to live there is ridiculous," she said about the university, which reported that 12 people were arrested, including nine students.

Fanning is sending emails to the school's administrators, asking that they apologize and allow students to protest peacefully.

Meanwhile, she said she's reconsidered donating to the school in the future, adding that she would donate more if the college leaders would publicly support their students, rather than escalating actions against them.

Some parents are also angry about the money spent and the time that it took before their children headed off to school, including parents who hired tutors and counselors to help their students be accepted at the nation's top universities.

Christopher Rim, founder and CEO of Command Education, which helps students complete college applications for competitive schools, said he has gotten calls from about 25 parents whose children are attending Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles. The parents want partial or full refunds from the schools.

"Physically blocking their child from attending class or a lecture hall is 100% not what they signed up for," he said. "They are beyond upset at what's going on."

The parents are also angry that many schools are canceling their graduation ceremonies over the protests.

Lana Shami, whose daughter is to graduate from the University of Southern California, said it's a "huge letdown" that there will be no graduation at the school or celebration at a university "where we paid an exorbitant amount of tuition for the last four years."