By focusing on the role that "in loco parentis" plays on college campuses, according to the author, we are offered a new angle of vision, one that may break us out of simplistic understandings of campus life in our time. In the 1960s, college students fought for free speech and against in loco parentis. Students did not want their colleges to dictate, through rules or unstated norms, how they could fight for causes they believed in. Colleges began to step out of the role of guardian and allowed students new freedoms of expression. Fast forward to today when the college students of the 60's and 70's are raising children. Many still believe in the importance of free speech as an ideal and yet their generation is also known as "helicopter" or even "snowplow" parents. In their role as defender of free speech, they object as college students protest or no-platform speakers they disagree with. At the same time, when their child faces difficulties on campus -- from issues with roommates, to issues with a professor, to being caught breaking school rules -- they go on the attack, demanding that the college make things right. The goal of this article is to do some reflecting so that colleges are better positioned to offer the most reasonable and educative response to the tensions that exist between and within free speech demands and demands that colleges take on some of the "in loco parentis" roles that they were asked to step out of in the 1960s. Higher education can model what it means to respect growth and freedom, creating norms of interaction that have the potential to influence the wider culture.