This May, a Call to Connect
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy kicked off mental health awareness month with his latest advisory on the epidemic of loneliness surging through the country. On Tuesday, his office released an 81-page report on the subject, urging organizations and individuals everywhere to increase efforts to foster interpersonal connection. Although especially pertinent to youth, loneliness has been increasingly affecting people of all ages—to detrimental ends for their emotional as well as physical wellbeing. “Millions of people in America are struggling in the shadows, and that’s not right,” the surgeon general told The Associated Press in an interview. “That’s why I issued this advisory to pull back the curtain on a struggle that too many people are experiencing.”
Mental and Behavioral Health
Main Stories
One year after 17-year-old junior Jack Reid died from suicide in his dorm room at the elite Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, administrators have come out with “an extraordinary admission of failure,” The New York Times reports. Their statement reveals school officials knew Jack’s peers were bullying him in the year leading up to his death and did not effectively protect him in the process. This revelation was part of a settlement Lawrenceville made with Reid’s parents, yet experts say schools very rarely concede fault in instances of student suicide. The school also plans to endow a new dean’s position dedicated to supporting student mental health and anti-bullying efforts.
Other News
Higher Ed Dive reviews a recent survey of college seniors graduating this year and entering the workforce, revealing their interest in mental and emotional health support from their employers.
In an op-ed for The Chronicle, an educator from Simmons University discusses the implications of social-emotional contagion for the classroom—that is, how professors’ emotional condition will influence that of their students.
The Chronicle also features an op-ed from the vice provost of enrollment management at Oregon State University, Jon Boeckenstedt, who discusses why working in college admissions is becoming increasingly stressful.
Inside Higher Ed spotlights a new relaxation lounge at Rider University in New Jersey, considering the mental health impact of carving out dedicated spaces for students to unwind on campus.
Inside Higher Ed covers how the counseling center at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut uses “wellness wheels” to help students envision the many factors contributing to their wellbeing and make targeted improvements.
Also in Inside Higher Ed: A mandatory wellness curriculum involving physical activity at Spelman College appears to benefit “both its campus community and the generational health and wellness of the African American community.”
CNN features a new report from the the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, revealing that one in five high school students has witnessed community violence, which it calls “a significant public health concern.”
According to The Hill, a new survey from EdWeek suggests that student behavior has worsened since 2019, before the pandemic, with one-third of teachers saying “students are misbehaving ‘a lot more.’”
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
At Virginia Military Institute (VMI), chief diversity officer Martin D. Brown declared in a speech last week that “DEI is dead,” The Washington Post reports. “We’re not going to bring that cow up anymore,” he said. “It’s dead. It was mandated by the General Assembly, but this governor has a different philosophy of civil discourse, civility, treating — living the golden rule, right?” Before Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) came into office, VMI had been under government-led scrutiny for fostering a “clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism.”
Also from The Washington Post: Howard University has elected its next president to be Ben Vinson III, who currently serves as provost of Case Western Reserve University, a research university in Cleveland. Vinson is a historian of the African diaspora in Latin America and will succeed Wayne A.I. Frederick, who led for almost a decade.
Student Buzz
The Yale Daily News describes the challenges students have faced when seeking psychiatric treatment from Yale Health, including “reckless prescriptions and inattentive care.”
The Daily Californian reports that the cost of living in dorms at the University of California, Berkeley has increased at more than twice the rate of baseline tuition since the 2019-2020 school year.
The Daily Princetonian investigates how policies surrounding mental health leaves of absence have evolved in the last decade, including by speaking with two students who recently took these leaves.
The Daily Princetonian also covers an initiative by Princeton graduate students to study their own mental health, in the past finding the group’s rate of depression to be five times greater than the national average for college educated adults.
The Crimson reveals Harvard community members are also concerned about graduate student mental health, with hundreds signing an open letter to increase wellbeing support at the Kennedy School.
The Lafayette reports on the recent speaker appearance of Laurie Hernandez, a former Olympic gymnast, who discussed her experience with mental health challenges and urged graduating seniors to practice self-care.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
Higher Ed Dive reveals the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights received more Title IX complaints than ever before last year, outnumbering all other types of complaints. In total, the office fielded 9,498 Title IX complaints. However, 7,339 of them came from the same person.
Higher Ed Dive also features a new survey from It’s On Us, a campus sexual assault prevention organization, sugesting schools make efforts to engage men student-athletes in prevention efforts. “Men student-athletes say they lack the knowledge and skills to serve as active bystanders when it comes to preventing sexual assault, despite having the desire to do so,” the report says.
College students in California are rallying for their schools to start offering on-campus rape kits, exams that involve “DNA collection key to prosecuting rapists,” among other medical services. According to The Los Angeles Times, colleges rarely provide these services. After years of planning and a $350,000 grant, UC Irvine is one institution that managed to open a sexual assault forensic exam site.
Reproductive Justice
By order of Governor Kathy Hochul, public colleges and universities in New York must now assist students in accessing medication abortions. The governor said the passage of this bill, which Inside Higher Ed suggests has been an object of student activists for years, reflects her efforts to expand reproductive care as it comes under attack throughout much of the rest of the country.
Basic Needs
The Wall Street Journal homes in on the housing crisis affecting students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where 9% of undergraduates reported experiencing homelessness in a 2020 study. And elsewhere in the state, Inside Higher Ed finds the University of California, Davis, has started providing discounted or free lunches to students through the food truck AggieEats.
Student Success
The Washington Post considers the potential rise of the Classic Learning Test (CLT), a standardized test for college admissions like the College Board’s SAT and ACT. After a tense dispute with the College Board over its Advanced Placement African American studies course, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis passed a bill last week that allows students to take the CLT to qualify for the state’s Bright Futures college scholarship program and allows schools to administer the test to 11th-graders.
The Wall Street Journal explores the challenges of “equitable grading,” an approach becoming more popular at schools around the country that takes value away from homework. While schools hope this strategy helps level the playing field for students who have responsibilities outside of school and less time for daily assignments, some teachers say the system has “led to gaming the system and a lack of accountability.”
College Affordability
The Hechinger Report notes that, at 17 different colleges in the country, students whose families earn less than $30,000 annually pay more in net costs to attend than those whose families earn $110,000 or more.
Then, The Hechinger Report considers how even college programs advertising free tuition can end up failing low-income students. Given that the lowest-income students often qualify for aid like Pell Grants which tend to cover the entirety of community college costs anyway, one expert explained, “the only students who would qualify are students who aren’t eligible for Pell — wealthier students.”
Campus Safety
As colleges across the country become victims of “swatting,” or hoax reports of violence on campus aimed at initiating a SWAT team response, Inside Higher Ed says students want increased transparency in the wake of these instances. “As soon as it’s determined it’s a hoax,” one student affected at the University of Pittsburgh said, “I’d like to know that it’s a hoax.”
