Just saw a great article (thanks again, Brett Essler) about how colleges and universities are formalizing the “see ya later, parents!” portion of the Freshman move-in experience.
Morehouse College, in Atlanta, has a formal “Parting Ceremony” where speeches are made and then the Freshmen walk out of the building and through the main gates of campus. The gates literally swing shut, leaving the parents behind. And I think the parents get the message loud and clear.

Other institutions don’t have such formalized events but do use carefully-crafted messages throughout the orientation literature. Princeton, for example, makes it clear in the printed agenda that “activities past 4pm are intended for students only”.

How about you? Has your institution done anything to encourage (subtly or not-so-subtly) the parents to leave their kids and move on down the
road?