Student-Affairs Officials Share Concerns and Advice at Annual Conference

Who are your college patrons? This is what one conference has concluded.
The Chronicle: Daily news: 03/14/2006:

A skilled multitasker who dreams big, thrives on stress, and calls his parents constantly. That is the profile of the modern student, as described by college officials here on Monday at the annual conference of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.

At a news conference, leaders of the association discussed some of their top concerns, including the prevalence of high-risk drinking and mental-health problems among students, and the close relationships many students share with their parents, who are becoming increasingly involved in campus life and making more demands on student-affairs officials.

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How can colleges and parents work together more effectively? Because baby-boomer parents do not expect to "let go" of their children when they start college, more colleges are developing programs and liaison offices to deal with parental concerns

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Students in the so-called Millennial generation tend to welcome parental involvement in their campus lives. Mr. Keppler said the association recently found in a survey that current students call their parents 12 times a week, whereas baby boomers tended to call home just once a week.

Parents who intervene in their students' college experiences -- complaining about a grade or a judicial proceeding, for example -- are known in academe as "helicopter parents" for hovering over their children. Now some officials are calling the more-aggressive ones "lawn-mower parents," in reference to their attempt to run over administrators by challenging their authority...

Does this mean academic libraries need to prepare for book challenges from parents? Or perhaps there's programming they can do to help bring all of them into the library?