The McDonalds get Kevin set up in his new home, a room for three students in McDermott Hall at Providence College.

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The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

PROVIDENCE — The shiny black Chevy Suburban LTZ rolled up the shaded driveway in front of McDermott Hall, on the Providence College campus, yesterday morning.

Mike McDonald looked for a place to park among the minivans and other SUVs lining the driveway. Dozens of people, most fresh-faced teenagers dressed in cargo shorts and short-sleeved shirts, swirled around his vehicle.

A volunteer in a lime-green T-shirt offered his help, guiding McDonald as he backed up the Suburban. He stopped it just inches from a pile of boxes and plastic tubs piled at the end of a walkway leading to McDermott Hall.

McDonald popped open the tailgate. His wife, Margaret, emerged from the front passenger seat. They started to unload.

Kevin, the oldest of their four sons, had hopped out earlier to stand in line at a check-in table next to McDermott, near the heart of PC’s campus.

Another move-in day had started for freshmen, this time the Class of 2012, at the Catholic college in the city’s Elmhurst section.

On Saturday night, in a couple of hours, a lifetime’s worth of possessions and some-last minute purchases got loaded into the SUV at their home, in Braintree, Mass.

Yesterday morning, after goodbyes were said to his brothers, Kevin and his parents made a 40-mile dash down Route 95, aiming to be among the first to arrive when the college opened the dorms to new students at 9 a.m.

“We drove 90 miles an hour to get here,” said Margaret McDonald.

In a matter of minutes yesterday, out of the back of the McDonalds’ SUV came the essentials of dorm life: a duffel bag full of clothes, a pile of bedding, snack food. Some shirts on hangers, a metal desk lamp with a flexible neck, a silver trash can.

A pair of female “Saints” — volunteer upperclassmen — came over to lend a hand.

In their lime-green T-shirts, the Saints played sherpa for a day, lugging boxes and bags, laptops and luggage for the new arrivals.

The women took some things and led the family into the dorm.

They headed for the line at the elevator. Mike McDonald opted for the stairs, joining a stream of people huffing and sweating their way up.

Kevin’s room, a “triple,” is on the fourth floor: Room 406.

Providence College sends out a suggestion list of room items to students, said Alex Donnelly, a senior who will serve as McDonald’s resident assistant, or RA.

Even so, many students have separation issues with their belongings.

“It’s a freshman tendency to over-pack,” Donnelly said.

Some, Donnelly said, will get in touch with their roommates to sort through communal items, such as refrigerators and microwaves.

Kevin will share his room with two friends, classmates from Boston College High School in Dorchester, Mass. The three boys divvied up the big purchases over the summer.

“They made a deal; we drew the TV straw,” Mike McDonald said.

That was a stroke of luck for the roommates; the McDonalds sprang for a 26-inch Sony Aquos HDTV. One roommate brought a dorm-size Frigidaire refrigerator/freezer. A microwave fell to the third.

The McDonalds were the first of the three families to arrive on campus. A strategic move; Kevin scored the room’s single bed. His buddies got the bunks.

As Kevin, his father and the Saints brought up the TV and Kevin’s other possessions, Margaret McDonald domesticated one corner of the cinderblock room.

She unpacked the bedding, all new, and placed a yellow-foam mattress on top of the single mattress of Kevin’s new bed. She unpacked sheets, a quilt and two pillows.

She stuffed the pillows into cases and made up the bed, turning it into a medium-blue rectangle in the drab beige cube of a room. A matching fleece blanket, packaged in a tight roll, stayed on a pine dresser by the room’s window.

Kevin’s possessions piled up in the middle of the room and on a battered wooden desk next to his bed. Some clothes got hung in a particleboard closet along a wall opposite the window. Others will get put in a set of drawers under his bed.

In addition to the TV, there’s a laptop in a hard black case, a small plastic fan and a silver wastebasket. A mismatched area rug, beige with brown splotches, pokes out of a box.

He bought the laptop and most of his books over the summer, Kevin said. “I didn’t buy any clothes; I brought my old stuff,” he said.

When asked why on his first day at PC he chose to wear a Notre Dame T-shirt, Kevin’s answer was typically collegiate: “I packed all my good clothes and this was my last shirt.”

Four spiral notebooks and packages of pens and pencils go on a desk between his bed and the closet.

Where to put all the snack food would take time to sort out — the refrigerator was still in its box, the microwave had yet to arrive.

“I went to BJ’s and got more snacks than you can imagine,” Margaret McDonald said.

Pouches of sunflower seeds go into a bottom drawer of the desk for the time being. A case each of Gatorade and water, two tubs of Double Bubble gum and a box of Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn remained piled around the desk.

The family was still sorting out Kevin’s possessions when one roommate arrived, piling his own possessions into the room.

After the “hellos” were said, the negotiations quickly ensued.

Can we move the top bunk? Where should the TV go? Who gets the dresser?

Should they wait until the last friend arrives?

pgrimald@projo.com