Mental and Behavioral Health
Stanford University hosted a series called “Institutional Change at Stanford” with the second and final installation called “Making Change Happen.” The workshop brought together over two dozen students and administrators to discuss the University’s handling of issues like mental health and sexual assault. In small groups, students chose an issue and consulted with administrators, who acted as “coaches” to develop steps toward enacting institutional change.
Last week, the Harvard Varsity Club handed out copies of the book, “What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen,” to athletics administrators and Harvard athletes. The book addresses the mental health struggles of Madison Holleran, a University of Pennsylvania student-athlete who died by suicide in 2014. The distribution of the book is part of an effort to start a conversation about the stresses of a hyper-competitive university environment.
In an editorial The Hoya, the Georgetown University student newspaper, editors argued that mental health care options provided to students are “frustratingly inadequate” and structured to exclusively short-term individualized care. The schools’ administration recently allocated $10,000 to a pilot program that will subsidize off-campus mental health care for students with demonstrated financial need who are covered by the student health insurance plan. The project’s proposal requested $40,000. The Editorial Board writes that in addition to funding short-term coverage, Georgetown must seek continuing solutions for the long-term mental health care of its students.
University of Virginia students have expressed frustration about the wait times and session limits at the school’s Counseling and Psychological Services center. In response to these concerns, CAPS has increased its capacity over the past five years by adding six full-time positions. Additionally, the University is planning a new building for the Department of Student Health & Wellness, which will allow for expansion of services and in-person, rather than by-phone, triage.
Last week, University of Pennsylvania unveiled its new wellness website which aims to streamline all of the University’s mental health resources, events, and news. The website is an initiative that stemmed from last year’s “Campus Conversation” about mental health. The website has received mixed reviews from students; some are pleased with the increased organization of the site, and with the section that allows for students to submit ideas on how to improve wellness at Penn. Other students are frustrated by the surface-level response to the more deep-rooted problem that mental health poses on Penn’s campus.
An independent, student-led task force is investigating Cornell University’s mental health policies, programs and practices. Ten students attended the initial information session, which is expected to comprise of 10-15 students. Matt Jirsa ’19 one of the students organizing the task force, told The Sun, the student newspaper, that they have not yet approached university administration with their plans, but that he hopes for full cooperation and transparency between the task force and the administration. “We really want to work with the administration,” he said. “We’d rather create change as mutual benefactors in order to see that change last over the long term.”
Diversity and Inclusion
Connor Clegg, the student body president at Texas State University apologized last week after classmates shared images and comments he had posted on social media that many found to be racist. This week, Maël Le Noc, the leader of one the two branches of student government, said that the Graduate House of Representatives had demanded his resignation. The controversy comes at a time when tension over race are running high at the school. A recent anti-white column in the student newspaper provoked online death threats, and posters with white-supremacist messages have repeatedly appeared on campus.
Racist messages were found scrawled on a Boston University dormitory door this week. The message, written on a whiteboard, used an expletive, a racial slur and an offensive comment about the Philadelphia Eagles and Donald Trump.
Alt right groups and white supremacists have been actively targeting U.S. college campuses since January 2016, a practice that started to gain traction in the fall semester of 2016. Since September 2016, the Anti-Defamation League has recorded 346 incidents of white supremacist propaganda – flyers, stickers, banners, and posters – appearing on college and university campuses. These campaigns targeted 216 college campuses in 44 states and D.C.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
The victim in an infamous 2015 sexual assault case at Stanford University is no longer participating in a plan to create a plaque marking the site where she was attacked. According to Michele Landis Dauber, a Stanford law professor and family friend of the victim, the school dismissed her suggested wording for the engraving, which was planned to be an excerpt taken from her court statement. Instead of her selections, the university suggested alternative excerpts, including the phrase “I’m O.K., everything’s O.K.,” a passage taken out of the harrowing context in which it was originally used. Some Stanford students are gathering signatures for a petition asking the university to install the plaque with the victim’s preferred quotation.
Free Speech
The University of Chicago is hosting an event with the former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon despite protests and petitions calling for administrators to revoke their invitation. Luigi Zingales, a professor in the Booth School of Business, planned the event, and said in a statement that though he disagreed with Bannon’s politics, “the current problems in America cannot be solved by demonizing those who think differently, but by addressing the causes of their dissatisfaction.” The event was announced as a debate between Bannon and faculty experts, to be moderated by Zingales.
This week, the University of Washington’s College Republicans sued the university over its decision to charge the group $17,000 in security fees for a planned rally that features controversial conservative speaker Joey Gibson, the founder of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer. The College Republicans allege that the fees represent “an illegal restriction on protected speech.” However, the university claim that the fees are based on a number of factors, including threats of violence, and that the $17,000 likely won’t cover the cost of security for the event.
Greek Life
Cornell University Fraternity Zeta Beta Tau is on a two-year probation after an investigation by the school’s fraternity and sorority board into a secret, fat-shaming sex game called the “pig roast.” In the game, would-be brothers allegedly earned points for having sex with overweight women and were told not to inform the women about the contest. Cornell and the fraternity’s national office denounced the game.
One year after their son’s hazing-related death, Jim and Evelyn Piazza published a letter in the Washington Post, urging parents to have conversations with their children about pledging and hazing, writing, “It is too late for Tim, but it is not too late for your son or daughter.” The Piazza’s write of their work with other advocate-parents to bring an end to “senseless, preventable hazing deaths in America.”
Policy
A Republican-led higher-education bill working its way through Congress is an attempt to correct what is seen by religious and right-leaning groups as antipathy toward conservative beliefs on American campuses. The bill would allow religious colleges to bar openly same-sex relationships without fear of repercussions, and give controversial speakers more leverage appearing on campuses. The far-reaching bill also includes a measure that would stop colleges from punishing fraternities and sororities for refusing to admit members of the opposite sex. The bill has drawn a sharp response from college administrators who fear the intrusion into their authority over their own campuses, and from LGBT advocacy groups who see the bill as a license to discriminate.
Sexual Health and Contraception
Notre Dame University has decided to ban “abortion-inducing drugs” from its third-party-provided insurance plans. They will, however, begin covering “simple contraceptives.” The change was announced in a letter from its president, Father John Jenkins, who called it a “complex decision.” It is not clear which drugs the ban entails, such as the morning-after pill, IUDs, or other long-acting contraceptives. That list will be available in March. The decision is Notre Dame’s latest attempt to balance its Catholic premise with the diversity of its community.
Disability
The National Council on Disability conducted a study that found that colleges are not effectively addressing the needs of students with disabilities in their sexual assault prevention efforts, policies, or procedures. The inadequacies include the absence of procedures to communicate with victims who are Deaf or hard of hearing and inaccessible support services for students with mobility disabilities. A recent study by the Association of American Universities revealed that 31.6 percent of undergraduate females with disabilities reported nonconsensual sexual contact involving physical force or incapacitation, compared to 18.4 percent of undergraduate females without a disability.
Wellness
This week, the Chronicle of Higher Education profiled the University of Vermont’s innovative Wellness Environment (or WE) program, which uses neuroscience to combat a culture of drug use and binge drinking. Almost 900 freshman, almost a third of the class, signed up this year. The program’s founder and director, James J. Hudziak, believes that “Universities have an obligation to invest in the critical development of the human brain.”
