Mental and Behavioral Health
In the aftermath of this week’s presidential election, the Jed Foundation issued a guide for administrators on how to address students’ levels of stress, anxiety and fear resulting from an election season marked by hostile and aggressive speech and behaviors. The Foundation urges college leaders to recognize the difference between political discourse and emotional distress and encourages them to reach out with consistent and supportive communication to students.
Before the election results came in late Tuesday night, the American College Health Association published an open letter to the next president. In it, they called for expanding resources for mental health and suicide prevention, fixing the Affordable Care Act to increase accessibility for students, and protecting the privacy of students in cases of sexual assault.
At Penn State, like many colleges across the country, increases in demand for student mental health counseling have far outpaced increases in enrollment. The school’s Center for Collegiate Mental Health director and Vice President for Student Affairs spoke about the state of mental health on campus at the school’s most recent Board of Trustees meeting. “The de-stigmatization of mental health is a progressive trend that we hope continues,” Vice President for Student Affairs Damon Sims said, “but it will mean that we need to provide more of these services.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education compiled a collection of articles on the influence of alcohol on campus that explores the reasons the problem has persisted despite efforts to address it.
Many schools are turning to online therapy as a way to handle increased demand for counseling. Therapist Assisted Online, or TAO, was developed by the former director of the University of Florida’s counseling center and is now used on campuses across the country as a way to expand capacity, treat students with less severe symptoms, and support students between in-person sessions.
At the University of Minnesota, student actions have translated into changes in mental health care on campus: In May, the Provost’s Committee on Student Mental Health issued a report that called for more therapists and noted that one-third of tuition refund requests in 2015 were for mental health reasons. The school proceeded to hire additional counselors and train faculty and staff to help students access care on campus.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Chronicle of Higher Education issued a special report on creating a diverse faculty that provides in-depth information on how some universities are diversifying their professors and the challenges that nonwhite faculty face.
The day after Donald Trump was elected President, officials at universities in Louisiana and California reported that police were investigating at least three attacks on female Muslim students as hate crimes.
The Harvard women’s soccer team came forward and identified themselves by name in an op-ed in the Harvard Crimson, taking a stance as activists invested in changing the culture at the university. The women’s team was lewdly described and ranked by the Harvard male team in a “scouting report” that led to the suspension of the men’s team last week.
Harvard University cancelled the rest of the season for its men’s soccer team after the Harvard Crimson revealed that the members of the 2012 team exchanged sexually explicit ‘scouting reports’ that rated female soccer team recruits’ physical attractiveness and speculated about their sexual preferences. The school conducted an investigation that determined that the exchanges were tradition and had continued through this year.
A University of Oregon law professor was placed on leave after wearing blackface to a Halloween party. The UO administration condemned her actions, while other law professors on faculty wrote a letter calling for her resignation. “We were expecting this to come from students,” said Natashia Greene, a sophomore. “Not a grown woman.”
On Wednesday, two men who were later identified as Babson College students, drove through the all-women’s school Wellesley College in a truck, waving a Trump flag and antagonizing students. Reports indicate that the two men spit in the direction of Wellesley students and shouted racially offensive and gender demeaning remarks.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
As colleges grapple with how to both prevent and deal with the aftermath of sexual assault on their campuses, the Chronicle raises the question of the frequency of serial offenders, like the University of Wisconsin student who was recently accused of assaulting six women. Two papers published last year found that there were not small numbers of men committing all of the assaults; rather, men on campus were acting within a system of existing norms that permitted the behavior. Prevention programs may be more effective, but programs on handling sexual assault investigation tend to be more readily taken on by school administrations.
