User blog comment:Opaquanity/Each persons connection to the academy?(Beacon)/@comment-76.6.151.212-20130722223233/@comment-10390252-20130722224022

It's a boarding school; the students will live there in dorms for the semester and will probably only go home for major breaks (inter-year and maybe for whatever equivalent of the new year/solstice they have in the RWBY world). So, Yang's folks might still be alive but, as she said, Beacon is there home for now.

Until it gets trashed in the apocalyptic struggle to come, of course. ;)