Mental and Emotional Health
The editorial board of the University of Connecticut’s student paper, the Daily Campus, argues that the school must remain committed to student mental health. UConn recently hosted the President’s Symposium on Mental Health, which brought together leaders in higher education and mental health to discuss long-term solutions. However, they write, the school needs to ensure they are meeting the immediate needs of the students on their own campus.
The Daily Penn covers the unique mental health challenges of international students who make up around 12 percent of the Penn student body, many coming from countries where mental health is not discussed or acknowledged.
Services dogs on campus at University of Oregon help students calm their seizures, manage their PTSD, and retrieve their medication. The school wellness center also brings therapy dogs on campus twice a month.
Utah State University students lobbied their state legislature to officially declare a mental health crisis across the state for all public college students. Utah ranks fifth, per capita, in the nation for youth suicides.
From Feb. 24 – 26, 70 students from all Ivy League schools came to Brown University for the second annual Ivy League Mental Health Conference. “The theme of the conference (was) creating sustainable change in our institutions,” said Brown junior Lacy Cano, who co-organized the conference. “We really tried to stress (to the students) … this shouldn’t be a conversation that occurs once a year.”
The University of Colorado’s Boulder campus wants to double the student mental health fee in order to meet the surging demand for counseling and psychiatric care. When the school initially calculated the fee, they anticipate around 9,000 students would use the services; last year, more than 15,000 students visited the counseling center.
Diversity and Inclusion
Penn’s chapter of Active Minds is hosting a “Mental Health Through My Eyes” series that brings conversations about mental health to different campus cultural and identity groups. So far, they have hosted events at the LGBT Center, the Women’s Center, and Hillel.
Days after President Trump rescinded the Obama administration’s policy allowing students equal accommodation based on the gender they identify with, the Chronicle interviewed Z Nicolazzo, an assistant professor of higher education and student affairs at Northern Illinois University. Nicolazzo, who identifies as trans*, recently published the book “Trans* in College: Transgender Students’ Strategies for Navigating Campus Life and the Institutional Politics of Inclusion.”
In an opinion column for the Diamondback, the University of Maryland’s student paper, Maris Medina writes about the history of tokenism and how it has played out in her own life. “Given my inherent position as the glorified Asian friend among my friends — whom I love and appreciate dearly, don’t get me wrong — I have simultaneously been revered as the voice for all Asian people everywhere while feeling isolated and even unintentionally caricatured as ‘other,’” she writes.
A new study in JAMA Pediatrics found that teen suicide rates drop when same sex marriage is legalized. “These are high school students, so they aren’t getting married anytime soon, for the most part,” lead author Julia Raifman of Johns Hopkins University said in announcing the findings. “Still, permitting same-sex marriage reduces structural stigma associated with sexual orientation.”
Colleges are providing resources for their students who are immigrants and worried about President Trump’s ramped up deportation policies. By expanding counseling services and providing legal aid, campuses are trying to assuage some of their students’ fears and stress.
In an opinion piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Amherst College President Biddy Martin responds to a previous Chronicle article about the divisions of race, gender and class within the school’s athletics program. “What he’s talking about are longstanding society-wide problems, hardly ones that are limited to any one institution,” she writes, countering with steps Amherst has actively taken to diversify its student body and athletic teams.
A racist video of a white woman rapping about white power and lynching in an Old Dominion University shirt was swiftly condemned by campus administration. ODU President John Broderick and Student Government Association President Rachael Edmonds called the video “an outrageous act of hate and intolerance and we are sickened by this vile video. There is no place on this campus for hate and divisiveness.”
Michigan State University is banning whiteboards in its dorms, saying they have become more of a distraction at best and an outlet for anonymous hate messages at worst. However, since texting and social media are where most communication takes place, some MSU students don’t see the ban as productive. “Rather than asking, ‘what can we do to make it harder for residents to bully/harass other residents,’ the university should be asking, ‘how can we get residents to not bully/harass in the first place?’ ,” MSU sophomore Jack Kellett wrote in an letter to the school paper.
The Arkansas Supreme Court voted unanimously to overturn a city ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in Fayetteville, home to the University of Arkansas. The ordinance had been in place since July 2015.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
In an op-ed for the Daily Northwestern, Sarah Schecter writes that the school should use the current moment to set higher Title IX standards. The school is dealing with the fallout of multiple alleged sexual assaults and druggings at fraternities. “As a community, we have the power to do something bigger than ourselves –– complicity is simply not an option,” she writes.
At Kansas University, The Heartland Sexual Assault Policies and Prevention on Campuses Project, also known as the“Heartland Project,” is conducting an anonymous survey on students’ perspectives on sexual assault and the programs currently on campus to prevent it.
The University of Minnesota’s student paper, the Minnesota Daily, begins a three-part series on sexual assault and Greek life on campus. Part one examines how the leaders of Delta Upsilon tolerated assault within the fraternity, whose members were responsible for a third of the 12 alleged sexual assaults within the Interfraternity Council over the past two years.
The Harvard Crimson reports on the history of sexual violence, Title IX, and feminism from the ‘60s onward. The story traces the intertwined history of Harvard, which was an all-male institution until the ‘70s, and its sister women’s college, Radcliffe.
Alcohol and Substance Abuse
University of Colorado student Carlisle Olsen writes on the danger of easy social acceptance of drug use on college campuses.“We should celebrate the use of prescription drugs for the treatment of diseases, not the illegal black market sales of others’ medication,” she writes.
