Mental and Behavioral Health
The Sigma Kappa sorority has partnered with Talkspace, an online therapy provider, to give all its members free access to mental health counseling via text. Sara Chacon, the national president of the sorority of 7,000 members, said that the sorority looked into ways to offer counseling after hearing from a number of undergraduate members that lack of immediate access to mental health services was a concern. “The whole idea behind a sorority is that we provide that supportive environment for our members,” Chacon said. “We have advisors that serve as coaches but we don’t have any structured training in place around mental health support and guidance.”
Florida State University’s new “Student Resilience Project,” an online trauma-resilience initiative, aims to tackle not just how students can weather stress, but also how they can deal with trauma. This fall, 6,000 incoming freshmen will be required to take part in the program, watching a four-to-five-minute video about adverse childhood experiences such as emotional, physical or sexual abuse, a mother being treated violently, or household mental illness. Then, through a series of online videos in the style of TED talks, faculty and mental-health providers will offer strategies and testimonials on how students can deal with issues they may encounter in college.
University of South Carolina Student Health Services has a new staff member, Indy–a seven- month-old golden retriever. The therapy dog will host pet-a-puppy events and office hours for students feeling overwhelmed by stress. “Pet therapy” is common on college campuses as a way to help reduce anxiety.
University of Southern California is expanding their mental health services this year, adding 10 new mental health providers and launching several new mental health initiatives. USC is launching “Let’s Talk,” a program in which mental health professionals are stationed across campus for students to visit for informal drop-in informational sessions between classes. The school is also expanding an educational program designed to help resident assistants better understand how they can improve health and well-being for themselves and among the students they serve. Additionally, the school is rolling out JED Campus, a nationally recognized assessment and strategic planning initiative to enhance mental health and the ability of students to thrive.
Diversity and Inclusion
A new art installation at the University of Kentucky aims to address issues of race and equity, and to respond to a controversial fresco just feet away. The piece reacts to an 84-year-old fresco that some community members said depicts people of color in problematic ways, featuring images of black slaves tending crops and a Native American holding a hatchet.
On Monday night, a crowd at the University of North Carolina toppled a confederate statue known as Silent Sam, which had long been a target of students and others. About 250 students, faculty and local residents carrying banners condemning white supremacy used ropes to bring down the statue, the culmination of a protest that began earlier in the evening, one night before the first day of classes. Over the years, university officials have acknowledged that the statue elicited strong feelings, but said they didn’t have the unilateral authority to remove the historical monument. A university official said, “Tonight’s actions were dangerous, and we are very fortunate that no one was injured. We are investigating the vandalism and assessing the full extent of the damage. ”
Last year, inside Duke University‘s iconic chapel, the statue of Robert E. Lee was vandalized. Duke President Vincent E. Price ordered the confederate general’s statue to be removed, and in the months since, people on campus have debated how to fill the gap left at the entrance to the chapel. Now, as students return for the new school year, Price announced that the entrance will be left with an empty space, evoking this moment in history, a time when the country is reckoning with the past, confronting the legacies of slavery.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
Results from a new University of New Hampshire study showed that Title IX administrators and campus-security officers across the country are able to answer basic questions about the sex discrimination law and sexual assault when asked, but that administrators at small religious and private colleges are more likely to provide incorrect information. For the study, female faculty members and graduate students called up hundreds of Title IX and campus-safety offices and introduced themselves as students doing a class project on campus rape, quizzing administrators about Title IX’s requirements, how to report a sexual assault, how investigations work, and who is a “mandatory reporter” of sexual misconduct. While the study found that most administrators could answer the questions, many campus officials didn’t agree to talk – or didn’t even pick up the phone.
At many colleges, the vast majority of faculty members are considered mandatory reporters. If they hear about any incident of sexual misconduct, they must report it to the Title IX office or another campus authority. Their students may not know that, putting professors in the awkward position of having to interrupt a student who’s brought up a traumatic experience in mid-conversation, so they can tell the student that they have to report anything he or she says. And they might have to violate a student’s wishes to keep the information confidential. Campus rules on mandatory reporting for professors were issued during the Obama administration. To comply with Title IX, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights told colleges that “responsible employees” must report any potential sex discrimination, including sexual misconduct. Many institutions crafted blanket policies that put most faculty and staff members in that category.
College Affordability
New York University announced last week that it will cover tuition for all its medical students, regardless of their financial situation–a first among the nation’s major medical schools. The move is an attempt to alleviate the burden of debt and give graduates more career choices, especially in research and primary care. School officials have long worried that rising tuition and soaring loan balances are pushing new doctors into high-paying specialty fields, contributing to shortages in other areas.
Physical Health
Wallace Loh, University of Maryland, College Park President, said last week that the university was accountable for the death of 19-year-old football player Jordan McNair. He died in June, 15 days after suffering heat stroke during a preseason conditioning test. “The university accepts legal and moral responsibility for the mistakes that our training staff made on that fateful workout day of May 29,” he said at a news conference. The university’s athletic training staff did not take McNair’s temperature and did not use a cold-water immersion treatment, steps medical experts have said might have saved his life. A proposal by former University of Maryland athletic director Kevin Anderson in May 2017 would have placed the school’s athletic training staff under the supervision of the university’s medical school, but was never implemented. According to a memo obtained by The Baltimore Sun, Anderson wrote to President Loh, saying the proposal was “in better alignment with the NCAA’s best practice recommendation for establishing an independent medical care model to manage student-athlete injuries and illnesses.” McNair’s father said in a television interview that DJ Durkin, Maryland’s head football coach, should be fired. On Friday, University System of Maryland regents met behind closed doors to discuss personnel and legal matters.
Sleep
A new study has quantified the damage that lack of sleep has on academic success and general health among college students. Using a large data set of over 55,000 college students, researchers found that for every extra day a student experienced sleep problems, they were 10% more likely to drop a course, and their GPA dropped by 0.02. The study found that sleep disturbances had a greater effect on GPA than being diagnosed with depression or anxiety, and a greater effect on dropping a course than having a learning disability or being a frequent binge drinker. For first-year students, poor sleep has as much of an impact on academic performance as excessively drinking alcohol or using marijuana or other drugs (with the exception of prescription pill abuse).
