How parents of college seniors are reacting to campus disruptions

By Claire Fahy and Connor Michael Greene, The New York Times Company

Wednesday, May 8, 2024 | 2 a.m.

The college experience for many of the parents of the Class of 2024 did not begin with the quintessential moment of loading up the car to drive to campus. Instead, parents wished their freshly minted college students luck as they logged on to classes online.

The pandemic meant that for many, there had been no high school graduation ceremonies. Now some of the families who had to forgo college traditions are facing a graduation season that has been thrown into chaos by a wave of student-led protests sweeping colleges across the country.

Bunting and school banners have been replaced with tents and barricades as students have faced off with chants and dialogue that occasionally have veered into antisemitism, leading to police crackdowns and student suspensions. Some clashes between protesters and counterprotesters have even turned violent.

Many parents interviewed this week said they had been worried about their children’s safety on campus, while others were proud of their participation. Regardless of parents’ politics or feelings about the Israel-Hamas war, many are furious at how administrations have responded — by bringing in the police to tamp down protests, canceling events and communicating sporadically, if at all.

Columbia University in New York canceled its main graduation ceremony Monday after weeks of unrest on its campus. Separate, smaller ceremonies for each of its 19 colleges will still be held.

Shamsa Merchant, whose daughter, Fayre Khalique, is graduating from Columbia this month, plans to travel from Atlanta to New York City to celebrate with family members. She was disappointed that, once again, her daughter’s graduation would not go according to plan.

“These are the kids hit by COVID,” Merchant said. “I was hoping she was going to shine and get what she deserves with all of her friends. So yes, I’m very sad.”

Emory University in Atlanta also announced Monday that it was moving its universitywide commencement to an indoor complex off campus. And the University of Southern California decided last week to host a commencement “celebration” at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum instead of having its traditional on-campus graduation ceremony.

Natalie Moss’ daughter, Isabella Fenn, is also graduating from Columbia. Moss, who lives in White Plains, New York, said she was upset that her daughter had been denied a full graduation experience.

“It felt like a jab to the stomach,” Moss said of the news that Columbia’s commencement had been canceled.

Even on campuses where graduation ceremonies were not curtailed, parents bristled with frustration after weeks of disruption to their children’s education and, in some cases, emotional distress caused by the protests.

In a letter sent to administrators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday, a group of concerned parents said that by permitting a protest encampment on campus to continue, the school had “created a poisonous reality” for students who “cannot walk freely” across campus, are “concealing their Jewish identities” and are routinely experiencing stress and trauma.

“Students previously happy to attend MIT cannot wait until the semester is finished to flee from campus,” the parents wrote. “This extends to graduating students and their families who cannot wait to leave the school, as opposed to looking forward to celebrating their commencement and achievements.”

Dr. Elad Levy, an Israeli-born surgeon in western New York and a member of the parents’ group, said it had been a “brutal” year for his daughter, a 19-year-old sophomore.

“Last year, it was, ‘I found my people. It feels like home,’ and this year, it’s 180 degrees different,” he said. “I tell her to find strength in the turmoil, that the world is not an easy place, and that she is stronger than hate.”

Other parents were frustrated by schools’ communication with students and their parents. Lynn Taska, a clinical psychologist in New Jersey and the mother of a student at Emerson College in Boston, where the police dismantled a protest encampment last month, said she had not received enough substantive information about decisions made by administrators.

“We get these nice emails from the president, but I don’t feel I know enough,” Taska, who supported students’ right to protest, said. “Colleges don’t want parents involved, and so I don’t think parents at any institution are getting the transparency we would want.”

But some parents said they saw the protests as part of the essence of a college experience.

Albert Yaboni, whose daughter is graduating this spring from Columbia and has participated in campus protests, said that campuses have long been hotbeds of this kind of discourse. Yaboni and his family are from Smithtown on Long Island and, despite being saddened by the cancellation of the school’s main commencement, support his daughter’s activism, he said.

“I think that college campuses are for the purpose of expressing your opinion and for protests — going back to 1968 and to apartheid,” Yaboni said. “I don’t know if you can divorce the two things.”

Regardless of their stance on the protests’ merit, many parents just wanted to be able to mark this moment with their children. Claudette Khachatourian, a single mother whose daughter is graduating from New York University this month, said she was afraid her daughter’s school would follow Columbia’s lead and cancel commencement.

“I’ve done everything and anything to fulfill my kids’ dreams to come true,” Khachatourian said. “This is going to be a lifetime scar on kids who aren’t going to graduate.”

Moss, the Columbia parent, had similar sentiments but said that the adversity the Class of 2024 had faced over the past four years would be good for them in the future.

“I had to stop and say, ‘She’s going to be OK,’” Moss said of her daughter. “The whole class is meant for something more.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.