SLU Parents’ Facebook Page
Although the group has been around for less than five years, the Unofficial St. Lawrence University Parents’ Facebook Page has already become a valuable resource for SLU parents and an embodiment of Laurentian community values.
The group is designed to enable the parents of current and incoming SLU students to communicate with each other in a range of different ways, which include asking and answering SLU-related questions, notifying each other of what is transpiring or upcoming on campus, and celebrating the successes of each other’s children, according to Kiki nee van Raalte Melvin, one of the group’s two current moderators and a co-founder. The group is comprised exclusively of parents and has no official affiliation with the university administration.
The Facebook page was created by Angela Bernhardt in July 2019 when Melvin’s daughter was an incoming freshman. As an alum of the SLU class of ‘86, it turned out that Melvin was ideal to help get the group off the ground, leading Bernhardt to make her a moderator. Bernhardt had a child going to SLU at the time, but was not an alum herself. She stepped down as a moderator after her son graduated in 2023. Since then, Melvin and another mom have been in charge of moderating.
At the moment, the group has more than 1,600 members, some of them being parents who are staying involved after their children have graduated. Melvin said that they make sure only parents can be part of the group without any students joining. This ensures that parents, whether or not they post anonymously, can communicate about their children’s lives without students being able to see posts pertaining to their peers.
Some members of the group are also SLU employees, which Melvin considers beneficial, because it gives the university’s workers additional insight into parents’ priorities. After parents posted in the group last fall that their children were returning to unclean dorms, Melvin said that this year all feedback regarding cleanliness was positive. She likes to think that the SLU employees in the group were made aware of the cleanliness issue through their involvement. The page is kept updated with helpful advice, such as tips on financial aid and tuition paperwork, reminders about events and fundraisers, recommendations of businesses in town, and graduation gift ideas. Melvin said that this information is especially helpful whenever students might forget to notify their parents of one thing or another. Parents have also used the page to share information about academic support for struggling students. Melvin herself reached out to the group when her daughter was having trouble with physics and another mom offered that her son could help, which has since led to the two mothers’ children dating for the past three years and counting.
While the group supports the Laurentian community in a variety of ways, Melvin highlighted that one of the most important impacts “is showing them they’re not alone.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, when SLU’s policy was to send home infected students who were from within 500 miles of the school, the page allowed parents to offer rides and sometimes even temporary housing for each other’s children. Another instance in which the group supported students through the pandemic occurred when the Hullet and Lee Residence Halls were quarantined. Parents used the page to send Melvin donations that were used to help SLU Dining Services bring Sergi’s pizza rolls to the students in the building. This not only helped the students but also supported Sergi’s Italian Restaurant, Pizzeria, and Banquet Hall, whose business was negatively impacted by the pandemic.
Melvin believes that the Parents’ Page is a positive and supportive contribution to SLU that represents the culture of the Laurentian community. “SLU’s spirit of family seems to have carried over to the group,” she said, “Even among parents who aren’t alumni. Everyone becomes a Laurentian in the truest sense.”