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Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Snapshots from Home



Jerry Seinfeld
or 'Tolstoy's Emblematic Death':
Your Choice



Today's New York Times:


Forget the traditional football game, the dry lectures and the meet-and-greet with professors and administrators. At some colleges, parents’ weekend has expanded into a far more elaborate ritual.

Take last weekend’s big-name entertainment and parental pampering at George Washington University.

As many as 5,000 parents descended on the campus in downtown Washington not far from the White House, where they could take an organized tour of city sites, attend a jazz brunch or a silent auction, get massages — and take in a show by Jerry Seinfeld, who performed twice at the university’s athletic stadium. Tickets ranged from $57 to $125; the 4,200 seats for each show sold out.

“This is the most elaborate, and nicest, parents’ weekend,” said Stephen Andolino of Whippany, N.J., outside the parents’ weekend registration area, which was loaded with giveaways, including T-shirts and stress balls.

Mr. Andolino and his wife, Rosalie, have put one child through college and have two others enrolled — one is at Georgetown — so they have a basis for comparison. The couple attended one of the Seinfeld shows with their son, Philip, 20.

Many universities do stick to the traditional template of football game and faculty lecture. Last weekend at Yale, for instance, in addition to the big game — Yale beat Penn by 17-14 in overtime — and performances of the Yale Glee Club, parents could attend faculty lectures on “Tolstoy’s Emblematic Death,” “Plagues and Pleasures” and “The Teaching of Theater in the Language Classroom.”