Introduce visiting days for campus

Visiting days used to be something everyone looked forward to in primary and high school. Brown shirts became white and shoes shone. Everyone, including the school bully would be on their best behaviour.

This past Sunday, a residential complex in Moi University main campus went up in flames. It was a terrible scene and with each flame, property was lost.

One can only imagine how long it would take one to recover from such a loss and the helplessness the victims’ parents were in at that moment.

Which begs the question: Do parents know where their children stay and how they survive the murk that is college life?

Often times, when accommodation is not provided or schools cannot accommodate the large number of students that are placed in the system, students are forced to cater for themselves. Parents, under the ignorant presumption that their children have everything figured out, do not care to follow up.

If there were a visiting day for institutions of higher learning, some of the problems in university would be solved. Co-habiting and truancy, for instance, would be non-existent, crimes of passion would lessen, security would be heightened and debauchery would lower.

The nonchalance exhibited by parents is the sole reason why their children are comfortable housing each other, starting families, dealing in everything illegal and, sometimes, end up dying by their partners’ hands.

If I were a dean (of students), I would ensure visiting days were random and only known by parents.

Then Mama Kevin whose son sings in the church choir would be shocked to find him making someone’s daughter sing songs.

Baba Mercy would be shocked to find his prize child high on every illicit drug available on campus.

Mama Boyi, who sings his praises and judges every other person’s child would be close to fainting on realising that her son runs a drug empire on campus and he last attended classes in first year.

In addition, Baba Ben, who educates almost everyone in the village, will receive his wake up call when he finds his son frail from hunger because the last time he heard from his parents and received any money was during Christmas.

Visiting days are important for these and so many other reasons.

While institutions have rules, they are ironically permissive, uninterested and out of touch with what happens in the average student’s life.

As such, parents need to be more involved with what happens in their children’s lives because before they were students, they were first their children.