Mental and Behavioral Health
As colleges across the country strive to improve student mental health on campus, some are offering classes in the practice of positive psychology, the scientific study of what goes well in life and how to cultivate more of it. Research has shown that teaching youth resilience and positive psychology can reduce and prevent symptoms of depression and anxiety, lower stress, and promote wellbeing. It can also improve grades. A course at the University of Pennsylvania encourages students to try meditation or journaling, and teaches them to build stronger relationships. Similar courses at Harvard and Yale became the most popular courses in each university’s history. Other schools are trying similar initiatives on a smaller scale. Temple University created a Resiliency Resource Center with tools for students to use their own strengths to address depression and anxiety. Saint Joseph’s University offers mindfulness sessions, and Drexel University plans to add mindfulness training to freshmen orientation.
Leaders in student mental health will convene at the 17th annual Depression on College Campuses conference this month at the University of Michigan. This year’s theme is “One Size Does Not Fit All: Aligning Levels of Care to Student Mental Health Needs.” It was selected to highlight the need to tailor approaches to student mental health as college campuses become more diverse.
Indiana State University students will vote on a referendum for a new health and wellness fee to fund increased mental health services and prevention programming. Under the Student Government Association proposal, most students would pay a $75 per semester health and wellness fee. Funds would be used to hire more staff, including mental health professionals, more health/wellness programming through Student Health Promotions, mental health first aid training for students, faculty and staff; and funding for a campus-wide program for students in distress that helps them connect with the services they need.
Redefining Mental Illness (ReMI), a Southern Methodist University student organization that discusses mental health and its impact on a college campus has partnered with the SMU organization Feminist Equality Movement (FEM) for an event to discuss women’s mental health. ReMI and FEM have individual monthly meetings to discuss mental illness and female empowerment, respectively. The event’s conversation included why the groups believe that women’s mental health needs should be discussed separately, something ReMI Founder and Co-Director India Simmons said is because of the huge expectations placed on women.
The inaugural leavetaking peer program at Brown University is working to help students maintain a connection to campus while on leave this semester. The Curricular Resource Center is collaborating with the Undergraduate Council of Students Wellness Committee and Student Support Services to support the program, said Peggy Chang, director of the CRC and associate dean of the College. “The idea, that came out of the UCS Wellness Committee was to contact students while they are on leave – personal leave or medical leave – and ask them if they wanted to receive a care package or news updates,” Chang said, adding that it is an “opt-in program” that ensures the privacy of students on leave.
Washington University in St. Louis Student Health Services now offers an online therapy program, Therapist Assisted Online, to improve student mental health care. Therapist Assisted Online (TAO) is designed to provide students with a more accessible and less time-intensive therapy option.
In Inside Higher Ed, Merav Fine Braun, the executive director of Hunter College Hillel, and Jenna Citron, the executive director of Queens College Hillel, discuss the need for colleges to understand the distinct mental health needs of commuter students. According to Braun and Citron, these students often feel less grounded and torn between two worlds. The article states that commuter students often maintain two separate identities, and suffer from others’ common misperception that they don’t want to be involved in campus activities. Additionally, commuter students have increased financial pressures and career path difficulties, as they often come from families that don’t have extensive professional networks.
The University of Iowa will soon begin requiring online suicide-prevention training for students entering the university and for resident assistants. University Counseling Service Director Barry Schreier said at the state Board of Regents meeting that UI is working on ways to provide this training for faculty and staff as well.
Following the results of last year’s student health survey, which showed that BGLTQ students were more likely to face mental health issues, Harvard University Health Services and the Office of BGLTQ Student Life have partnered to create a working group to address the mental health needs of this student population. The group will be comprised of undergraduates who identify as BGLTQ, and will meet three times over the next several weeks to create recommendations for initiatives to promote students’ mental health. The purpose of the working group is to develop data-driven interventions to improve the emotional wellbeing of BGLTQ students at Harvard.
In a letter to the Editor of the Badger Herald, University of Wisconsin student Taylor Hurst argues that UW’s failure to provide adequate, accessible mental health services jeopardizes the health of many students on campus. Hurst wrote, “As a student who deals with multiple mental health diagnoses, including anxiety and depression disorders, I’ve experienced difficulty accessing effective services and I’ve heard similar stories from other students who have sought treatment through University Health Services.”
Diversity and Inclusion
Educators recognize that barriers that trip up disadvantaged students are as much social and emotional as academic. Learning communities, which have been around for decades at both two- and four-year colleges, offer academic support, mentoring, and career guidance to students who struggle with basic academic skills. According to a report in the Chronicle, They are designed to give students a sense of belonging and shared purpose along with intensive academic support. Now, as colleges seek to graduate more first-generation and underprepared students, some have found ways to make these learning communities more effective. When done well, the communities offer a valuable tool for community colleges that face high dropout rates and pressure from lawmakers to eliminate remedial courses.
A new survey says that while most Americans support affirmative action for racial minorities as a broad concept, a majority opposes the consideration of applicants’ race in college admissions. According to a Gallup poll, sixty-one percent of Americans favor affirmative-action programs for minorities, a record high up from 54 percent in 2016. For the first time, a majority of white respondents (57 percent) supported affirmative action, an increase of nine percentage points; support among blacks and Hispanics has remained relatively steady at 72 percent and 66 percent, respectively. However, a new Pew study found that nearly 75 percent of Americans believe colleges should not consider applicants’ race or ethnicity when considering them for admission.
A petition that was signed by more than 1,100 people within 24 hours, including former top school officials and prominent donors, calls on leaders of North Carolina’s public universities to stop “meddling and micromanaging” amid a tumultuous, politically charged time in the state. The Washington Post reports that the petition warned that the universities’ reputations and integrity were endangered. “The University of North Carolina is at a crossroads and its future is at stake. The UNC System Board of Governors must refrain from meddling and micromanaging. . . . The governance of our university system needs serious reform. We need less political influence and more civic responsibility.”
The president of Oakton Community College in Illinois called upon students to “choose inclusiveness over divisiveness” this week after flyers connected to a white supremacist group were found on the school’s campus. In an email to students, Oakton President Joianne Smith invited the college community to “have honest discussions about difficult subjects” and speak out against hate following the reported posting of flyers by a “known neo-Nazi and white supremacist group.” Smith wrote, “While we uphold the value of freedom of speech and expression, as a college community we can also choose to reject hate speech and provide personal support for one another.”
North Carolina Central University trustees have voted to strip the name of a former governor who was a segregationist from the school’s main administrative building. The vote trades Gov. Clyde Hoey’s name for that of the historically black university’s founder, James E. Shepard.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
In a lawsuit, high-ranking officials at Union College are accused of conducting a self-serving, botched investigation into a 2017 claim of date rape by a female freshman in the aftermath of an off-campus fraternity party. The lawsuit accuses the college’s chief of staff, associate dean of students and Title IX coordinator of improperly investigating and ultimately dismissing the accusation against the alleged assailant, an unidentified senior and member of the men’s soccer team.
Sexual Health
In a column in the University of Southern California newspaper the Daily Trojan, “You Do Uterus”, Kylie Cheung writes that though the University has installed a Plan B vending machine after years of student activism around the issue, the fight for student access to crucial reproductive health care can’t end there. Cheung argues for expanding students’ reproductive rights in one particular area: abortion access. She writes, “The recent addition of an affordable contraception vending machine to USC’s campus marks a critical step in the right direction for promoting gender equity, safety and access to key health care for the student body. But however uncomfortable this reality may be for some, the fact remains that abortion is health care, and like emergency contraception and all other safe, legal health care, it must always be an accessible option for college students across all socioeconomic classes.”
Free Speech
Police have arrested the man they suspect attacked a conservative activist on the University of California at Berkeley’s campus last month. Campus authorities arrested Zachary Greenberg, who is not a UC Berkeley student, and charged him with “force likely to produce great bodily harm.” The news comes after a campaign by conservative activists both at Berkeley and nationally, who have argued, on social media, right-leaning political websites and Fox News, that because of liberal bias, the attack garnered a delayed response from the police and university and a muted response from the public.
Last week, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC, President Trump announced that he would soon sign an executive order threatening to cut off federal research money to colleges that fail to support free speech. “Today I’m proud to announce that I will be very soon signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research grants,” he said. The announcement is likely to appeal to conservative lawmakers who have increasingly sought to intervene in campus matters. President Trump brought Hayden Williams, the conservative activist who was assaulted last month at the University of California at Berkeley, to the stage. Williams told the crowd that students like himself face “discrimination, harassment, and worse if they dare to speak up on campus.”
Trump’s announcement drew swift condemnation from college leaders and legal scholars who claim it may be illegal as well as a bad idea. Pushback from academe arrived almost immediately, with Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, referring to the planned order as “a solution in search of a problem.” Some of the sharpest criticism came from a campus leader known as a champion of free speech: Robert J. Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago. In an email to his campus he wrote that the executive order “would be a grave error for the short and the long run.” Zimmer wrote that federal regulation of campus speech would “chill” the environment for free speech and intellectual discourse and open up to bureaucratic judgment what is and is not a threat to campuses. “I believe that any action by the executive branch that interferes with the ability of higher-education institutions to address this problem themselves is misguided and in fact sets a very problematic precedent,” he wrote.
Hazing
Delaware State University officials are investigating allegations that the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity engaged in hazing after a car crash killed one student and injured three others. Marlon W. Jackson, 23, was taken to a hospital after the crash Saturday afternoon and died Thursday. He was driving when the car crossed a grassy median, and entered the northbound lanes of the highway and into the path of a pickup truck.
Guns on Campus
A West Virginia House vote to allow people with concealed weapons permits to bring guns onto campuses has drawn the ire of many West Virginia University students and professors. Lawmakers approved the measure 59-41. “Just trying to work through this logically, there’s not a real good argument I can make on why this makes sense,” said Roark Sizemore, a 21-year-old political science major and president pro-tempore of the West Virginia University Student Assembly. “It just seems really crazy.” Sizemore wondered whether classroom arguments about politics, which he said sometimes become heated, could either be cut short or turn violent if students are armed.
A 23-year-old man who threatened to shoot classmates at Oregon State University in a series of Twitter messages was sentenced to time served and will be on federal supervised release for three years. The investigation began after OSU’s public safety director was alerted about threatening posts from a Twitter account called “Hard Belly Dorm” in February 2018, according to FBI special agent Timothy Suttles.
Substance Use
A report on campus alcohol use found that Stanford University sends at least one student per week to the emergency room due to alcohol consumption. In an email to students, Vice Provost for Student Affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole wrote, “Today’s report shows that despite numerous efforts to reduce the harmful impact of alcohol in our community, the problem has persisted.”
