Sunday was the first day of Emily Mangelsdorf’s college life. She came prepared. Tons of clothes. Twenty pairs of shoes. Couch. Microwave. Refrigerator. Coffee maker. Even a rice steamer. “I’m sure my mom’s load for college was about half this,” she said, standing beside her pile of belongings atop Kansas University’s Daisy Hill.

KU’s residence halls opened Sunday morning. Throngs of parents and students wheeled, dragged and lugged box upon box across the parking lots and up the stairs and elevators to the dorm rooms. Stockpiles of dormitory gear stood on the lawns. Small armies of students, including several groups of happy-to-help male students, assisted in the transport.

“This girl had like 12 guys carry all her stuff up,” said Taylor Curry, a KU sophomore who was among those helping students move in.

“I’m like: ‘Are you serious? Do you have all that stuff?'” Travis Durham, an incoming freshman from South Lake, Tex., said he was setting up his room with food, bottled water, clothes, school supplies, a television, refrigerator, fan, XBox, and Nintendo Wii.

“I guess I’m kind of high maintenance,” he said, “but it’s what every college person should have, for sure.”

Some parents noted how the times have changed since they went to college. Durham’s mother, Liz Durham, said she didn’t even have a computer when she was in school.

“We didn’t have all the laptops and the cords and the printers and all the gaming systems,” she said. “We roughed it, I think, a little bit more than the kids today.”

As Mark Jaimes of Overland Park pulled a couch out of his minivan and prepared to haul it to his daughter’s room, he said his experience as a student living at KU was different.

“We didn’t bring our furniture,” he said. “We just took it out of the lobby of the residence hall. I think they’re better about enforcing the rules these days to make sure that doesn’t happen.”