Explore
Parent HandbookHealth Center
Reflections on an empty nest
Current News
College Catalog
Activities Calendar
Emergencies
ADA Accommodations
Student Handbook
Housing
Interact
Office of the Dean of Student LifeWWC CPO 6294
PO Box 9000
Asheville, NC 28815-90000
Dean of Student Life
Phone: 1.828.771.3800
Email:studentlife@warren-wilson.edu
Financial Aid Office
WWC CPO 6342
PO Box 9000
Asheville, NC 28815-90000
Financial Aid Director
Phone: 1.828.771.2082
Email:financialaid@warren-wilson.edu
Accounting Office
WWC CPO 6362
PO Box 9000
Asheville, NC 28815-90000
Accounts Receivable
Phone: 1.828.771.2062
Email: omega@warren-wilson.edu
Housing Office
WWC CPO 6261
PO Box 9000
Asheville, NC 28815-90000
Conference/Housing Director
Phone: 1.828.771.2071
Email: housing@warren-wilson.edu
Parent Pages
On these pages you will find important telephone numbers and
frequently asked questions, as well as information on a variety
of topics like academic support services, residential life and
student services. Also included is a piece of writing from a former
Warren Wilson parent to let you know you're not alone.
After reading the information, if you have questions, please feel free to contact us. And remember, you are part of the Warren Wilson Community and always welcome here.
Family Weekend
Join us for Family Weekend at Homecoming 2007, October 4 - 7.
Emergencies
If
your student doesn't answer the phone, you can call the
main college number at 298-3325. This phone is answered 24 hours
a day--Campus Watch crew members answer calls after business
hours, and an answering service operates as a backup.
If there's bad news and you want
someone to be with your student, call the Dean of Students office
at 771-3800 (during business hours) or the Public Safety cell phone
at 230-4592.
Parents of international students can call Lorrie
Jayne's office at 828-771-3056 or home at 828-299-1294.
The area code for Western North Carolina is 828.
Switchboard 298-3325
Academic Affairs 771-2083 academic@warren-wlson.edu
Academic Support Services 771-3012 lohare@warren-wilson.edu
Accounting 771-2062 omega@warren-wilson.edu
Admissions 771-2073 admit@warren-wilson.edu
Campus Post Office 771-3031 jlauer@warren-wilson.edu
Computing Services 771-3094 dharper@warren-wilson.edu
Counseling Center 771-3700 ashuster@warren-wilson.edu
Dean of Students 771-3800 studentlife@warren-wilson.edu
Financial Aid 771-2082 kpack@warren-wilson.edu
Health Center 771-2053 mnolan@warren-wilson.edu
Housing 771-2071 housing@warren-wilson.edu
Public Safety 771-3029 tpayne@warren-wilson.edu
President's Office 771-2070 president@warren-wilson.edu
Registrar 771-2086 cbridgma@warren-wilson.edu
Service Learning 771-3065 service@warren-wilson.edu
Work Program Office 771-2007 khuntley@warren-wilson.edu
Reflections
on an empty nest
by Jack Betts, Associate Editor, The Charlotte Observer
We were standing in line with a couple of hundred other incoming
freshmen from 38 states, seven foreign countries and, it looked
like, one or two distant solar systems.
My daughter snickered when her mom executed a slack-jawed double-take at one young scholar. He wore what appeared to be a stainless steel anchor shackle through his nostrils. His eyes darted left and right, as if wary of moving his head too quickly. It might have hurt, or maybe unbalanced his load.
It was moving-in day at Swannanoa's Warren Wilson College for our youngest. She had prepared carefully that morning: an old t-shirt, baggy ragged jeans, sandals, navy blue toe polish and an old white felt hat she picked up from a yard sale.
But as she looked around at the interesting variety of tattoos, shorn heads, purple 'dos, tongue studs and nose rings, she said in a quiet little-girl voice: "Dad, I'm the most normal looking person here." To which I replied, "That's not necessarily bad, is it?" I received a look of dark exasperation in reply.
So it goes as we once again renew our membership in the Ancient and Impoverished Order of Tuition-Payers. Over the next four years, if things go as planned, we will spend in the name of higher education about what it cost to buy our house all over again. Well, it's not that big a house.
The past few months have been an ordeal. We have dreaded the moment she would finally leave the home she grew up in, and counted the minutes until that day arrived.
Packing boxes, empty fruit crates and an old olive-drab footlocker littered the dining room, the upstairs hall and the guest room for weeks on end. Expensive shopping trips brought together the necessary trappings of academia: a new mouse for an old computer, a cordless phone, hiking boots, a coffee maker. Whatever happened to the days when a brand-new Webster's Seventh and a lava lamp were enough to launch successful cultivation of the groves academe?
We wondered momentarily if there might be a spell of homesickness. We learned better when she sweetly inquired, "So, what time do you guys think you'll head back home?"
I know a cue when I hear one. We walked back to the dorm. Exchanged final hugs. Dispensed last-minute advice. "Work hard," I admonished, while a silent voice somewhere inside me spoke words I never wanted to hear: It is time. Let her go.
We drove down the mountain, neither shedding tears nor high-fiving all the way back. Just as we had with our son seven years ago, we left our daughter of 18 years in a new environment, trusting that she could sort through right and wrong and find her way to her future.
It is a new experience for us, too. For the first time in 25 years, our nest is empty. We find ourselves as we were in the first years of our marriage, with new opportunities before us, not knowing exactly how it would go but looking forward to finding out.
A couple of years ago an old friend from home told me that one test of marriage is what happens after the youngest moves out. "You come home the first day and look at each other, and find out pretty quick whether you still like one another," he said.
Four days have passed. It's quieter. The place is neater. PTA meets next Tuesday night, but we're planning to take in a flick. So far so good.
Reprinted by permission