There is a disturbing trend at colleges and universities around the country for parents to form chat rooms to check up on their children.Such roundtables only purport rumors and inaccurate information, and we hope that they never hit Iowa State.Parents checking up on their student’s private life via the Internet is no better than bugging their dorm room or sitting outside with a high-powered zoom lens.When students leave home and go to college, they expect and deserve a certain degree of privacy and independence from their parents. At college, students can get in trouble without Mom and Dad knowing every detail, they can stay up until 5 a.m. and not get in trouble, and that’s the way it should be.Parents must realize that when their children leave to go on their own into the world, that they give up a certain degree of control over them, and that necessarily means that they don’t know every gory detail of their children’s lives.College students are legal adults. They can vote, sign their own documents, get a credit card, and order stuff without having to get their parents permission.Parents who are truly concerned about how their children conduct themselves at college should talk to their son or daughter rather than relying on second- or third-hand information. They will be sure to get the truth, and students will have a lot more respect for their parents if they treat them as the adults they are.If parents can’t ask their children about their life at college, then knowing about their children’s life isn’t their biggest problem. Their problem is trust.

editorialboard: Carrie Tett, Greg Jerrett, Katie Goldsmith, Amie Van Overmeer, Andrea Hauser and Jocelyn Marcus