Mental and Behavioral Health
At the latest installment of UC Berkeley’s Campus Conversations – monthly events where administrators take questions from staff, faculty and students — Stephen Sutton, vice chancellor of student affairs, spoke about creating a student body that is healthy and resilient. “The job has become a lot more complicated in the last few years,” Sutton said. He advises that the key is to develop programs that give students what they want: chances to engage with the world, develop lifelong relationships, find meaningful careers and learn to bounce back in the face of adversity.
In an op-ed in the Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper of the University of Virginia, Zachary Pasciak argues that CAPS should be reformed to be more accessible for all students. According to Pasciak, scheduling mental health appointments by phone poses a serious obstacle for many students seeking help, as anxiety can make it difficult for some to reach out. As an option, he suggests that CAPS should allow online appointment scheduling. Additionally, Pasciak calls for hiring more clinicians to accommodate the increasing need for mental health services and establishing additional locations for mental health related services on campus.
In an email to students on Wednesday night, Cornell University vice president for student and campus life Ryan Lombardi outlined plans for sweeping reforms to student mental health services. Last semester, a student-led mental health task force submitted a letter with detailed policy recommendations regarding mental health services to the Cornell administration. According to the email, this fall, CAPS will discontinue phone interviews with the introduction of in-person “same-day initial sessions.” Additionally, Lombardi announced that number of openings will be modified to accommodate all students each day. CAPS sessions will also be matched in “length and number of sessions to students’ needs/goals.” Lombardi promised to enhance access to psychotropic medication management services by fall 2019. Some students question whether these promises would result in meaningful improvements to the mental health support system, believing there is still a long way to go. One student said that he hopes “the measures Cornell is taking will include expanding staff to meet the university’s need for increased availability of professionals, as well as a streamlined process for getting off-site help when needed.”
California officials and campus leaders are providing more money and expanding programs to promote mental health, reacting to an unprecedented number of college students seeking help for depression, anxiety, eating disorders and, in some cases, suicidal tendencies. Setting record highs, about 13 percent of all University of California students and 16 percent of those at the California State University received some psychological counseling or treatment on campuses last year. Schools are hiring more counselors and therapists and starting less traditional and less costly alternatives such as peer discussion groups and online classes that teach ways to relax, improve study habits and counter anxiety.
University of Iowa Student Government recently voted to support two new pieces of legislation supporting a new suicide-prevention program and invoking a student mental-health fee increase. The legislation will allocate $5,000 for the suicide-prevention training of RAs and incoming students in addition to the $2 student-fee increase for mental-health services. In an op-ed in the Daily Iowan, Nicole Shaw wrote that the legislation is a monumental step in the right direction, praising the training. According to Shaw, RAs are responsible for the well-being of their residents, many of whom will suffer from some sort of mental-health issue. With this training, they will be able to support their residents and handle potentially dangerous situations correctly.
In an op-ed in the Lantern, Ohio State University student Haylee Brenek argued that, to be proactive about student mental health, the campus suicide prevention program, called RUOK? Buckeyes, should be incorporated into student organizations. The program identifies students at risk of suicide and encourages them to seek help. According to Brenek, building awareness of RUOK? Buckeyes could help students find the resources they need for themselves or others facing mental health challenges.
In an article in the William and Mary student newspaper, the Flat Hat, Maxwell Sacher proposes replacing the student health fee with a voucher program. According to Sacher, the second largest fee is for Health and Wellness. Sacher suggests that instead of this upfront cost, every student should be given a voucher equal to the fee. Under this plan, the Health and Wellness Center would start charging fees for its services. If a student doesn’t use up the entire voucher, a portion of the money would then be returned to the student. According to Sacher, this proposal will provide students with increased choice and help cut down the line for services.
Diversity and Inclusion
Appearing before a House education appropriations subcommittee to defend the Trump administration’s 2020 budget request for the Education Department, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was asked repeatedly last week by a member of Congress whether she believes schools should be allowed to discriminate against students based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. She would not directly answer.
After weeks of contention, the University of Mississippi announced last week that the Confederate monument at the center of its campus would be relocated, pending the approval of state agencies. Earlier this month, the school’s Associated Student Body, Graduate Student Council, Faculty Senate, and Staff Council all voted to relocate the controversial statue to a nearby cemetery on university grounds. In February, two neo-Confederate groups led a rally through Oxford, Miss., that ended at the base of the monument, which honors an unnamed Confederate soldier. The groups were protesting the university’s recent attempts to distance itself from Confederate history. In response, eight Ole Miss men’s basketball players took a knee during the playing of the national anthem before a game. Several groups, on campus and off, then reached out to university officials to express their support for the statue’s relocation. In an email to students, Larry D. Sparks, the interim chancellor, wrote, “This is an important decision for our university. The monument, its meaning, and its location have been a point of discussion and debate for many years.”
Four University of Georgia students were expelled from their fraternity last week after a video surfaced in which one of the students made a mock whipping motion with a belt and shouted at another to “pick my cotton.” In the video, which was initially posted to Snapchat and then reposted on Twitter, two white students are on a bed and two others are standing. One student is covered by a comforter and another holds a belt. When one of the students says “pick my cotton,” another responds, “I’m not black.” After repeatedly saying “pick my cotton” while making a whipping motion with the belt, a different student says, “You’re not using the right words.” That’s when one of them says: “Wait, get a video of it. Pick my cotton,” followed by a racial slur. The students all start laughing.
Students of Asian heritage are reporting instances of racial bias in the Duke’s School of Nursing. Several students spoke with The Chronicle, reporting that instructors treated them unfairly in clinical-nursing courses, the period of their education spent working in hospitals around North Carolina. The director of International House, a center for international students, recently told an investigator looking into a complaint filed by a student that the school appeared to have “issues with students of Asian heritage” in her experience. When The Chronicle contacted the nursing school about these accusations, a spokesman responded by denying any pattern of bias. “The Duke University School of Nursing did not and does not discriminate against students based on their country of origin,” wrote Michael Evans, assistant dean of communications, marketing, and business development for the school.
College and universities are increasingly allowing students to enter pronouns into campus data systems, change the gender listed on their campus record without evidence of medical intervention, or use a first name other than their legal name on campus records. Advocates say one aim is to reduce the incidences where trans and gender nonconforming people are misgendered – referred to with pronouns that don’t match their gender identity.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
The Education Department released draft regulations in November related to Title IX that, if they become law, would require hundreds (perhaps thousands) of American colleges and universities to change how they handle allegations of sexual assault and harassment. According to a report in the Washington Post, conforming campus rules to the new federal mandates will require time and attention, with difficult trade-offs that may divide campus communities. Universities will have to make choices like whether or not to exclude off-campus student-on-student rape from their definitions of student conduct offenses, which would be allowed under the new rules. Additionally, a narrower definition spares the university the difficulty of adjudicating charges of off-campus assault, but leaves victims with fewer options and may prevent the institution from expelling a known rapist.
Free Speech
President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to link grants and certain other funds for higher education to how colleges and universities enforce the right to “free inquiry” on their campuses. At a signing ceremony at the White House, Trump said he wanted to give notice to “professors and power structures” seeking to prevent conservatives “from challenging rigid, far-left ideology.” He said agencies would use their control over grants “to ensure that public universities protect, cherish, protect the First Amendment, First Amendment rights of their students or risk losing billions and billions of dollars of federal taxpayer dollars.”
The order raises questions about the role of government in regulating speech. While it was less harsh than many critics feared, constitutional-law scholars and higher-education leaders called it unnecessary and potentially dangerous. College leaders continued to call it a solution in search of a problem, arguing that the core of a university’s mission is to promote the free exchange of ideas.
A report in The Chronicle discusses the two sides of the campus free speech debate. Many conservatives have long argued that liberal criticism of controversial speakers chills the climate for speech, while liberals and academics counter that professors who’ve become the targets of the right-wing news media for their speech are the real victims. The Chronicle reports that a Fox News show managed to illustrate both sides of the argument in the span of a half-hour. The host, Laura Ingraham, first claimed that “free speech is more dead than alive at places like UC-Berkeley” and that liberals “dominate every aspect of university life,” then praising President Trump’s executive order. Later in the show, though, Ingraham attacked the views of two new instructors at New York University, as a headline appeared on the screen: “NYU Hires Radical Anti-Conservatives to Teach Journalism Courses.” Ingraham chastised NYU for employing the two liberal freelance journalists, Talia Lavin and Lauren Duca, in its journalism school.
Substance Use
University of Mississippi students can now receive a free prescription drug lockbox from campus Pharmacy Health Services. The lockboxes became available after the Center for Wellness Education conducted a College Prescription Drug Survey, finding that students are gaining access to prescription medications – for recreational use or self-medication – from friends and peers. “Our campus results from the College Prescription Drug Survey indicated that nearly 20 percent of student respondents took pain medications without a friend, peer or relative knowing,” said Peter Tulchinsky, director of campus recreation. “The lockboxes can help our students feel more confident about the security of their prescriptions.”
Greek Life
A report says a student at a now-suspended fraternity at Miami University in Ohio told university officials he was hazed by members who beat him with a spiked paddle, kicked him and forced him to drink large amounts of alcohol. The report says the student complained of being blindfolded and abused during a “hazing ritual.” He says he was taken to a hospital after saying he felt like he was “going to die.”
Sleep
Ithaca College’s Center for Health Promotion has purchased a sleep questionnaire to provide feedback for students to help improve their sleeping habits. The College Sleep Questionnaire (CSQ) tool is an anonymous questionnaire open to all students which provides information on how to better sleep habits. The feedback covers sleep patterns, sleep timing, physiological behavior, psychological behavior and basic statistics about sleep. The Center for College Sleep piloted the tool last fall and has shared the tool with campuses nationwide.
