On the surface, scheduling a weekend for parents of students to visit the Hilltop and reunite with their children seems like a thoughtful gesture from the university. After all, what better way to thank parents for paying roughly $60,000 in tuition fees than to present them with the dividends?
The answer is quite obvious: Don’t demand a cover charge for parents’ weekend registration, especially when most of the events on the weekend itinerary don’t normally have an admission fee.

Parents’ weekend, which took place last Friday through Sunday, is organized differently for each undergraduate college. Registration for the College’s program costs $45 for one parent and $65 for families. The McDonough School of Business charges a single attendee $45 and a family $75, while the School of Nursing & Health Studies has no cover charge. Each school has additional fees for optional events; for example, there is a box lunch available at O’Donovan Hall that costs parents and students a whopping $22 and $20, respectively.

Practically every minute is accounted for in the parents’ weekend schedule, and these events are supposedly the main reason for the high costs. Yet many of these events, such as a football game and soccer matches, typically feature free admission on any other weekend. The university does indeed take on a variety of expenses by organizing parents’ weekend, including overtime wages for workers and maintenance fees for venues, but the school could be a more gracious host by not demanding such fees from the weekends’ attendees.

The expense of attending Georgetown is steep but justifiable. Putting a price tag on parents’ reconnecting with their children, on the other hand, is both petty and out of place.