Mental and Behavioral Health
A Mary Christie Foundation survey found that parents are increasingly concerned over their students’ mental health. The report showed that 76 percent of parents polled believed mental health on college campuses was a very or somewhat serious issue. Results indicate that parents are concerned about the issue of mental health to the point where available resources play a component in college selection, but they have misconceptions around “disclosure, accountability and campus resources.”
Fresh Check Day health fairs are two to three hour events on college campuses that focus on suicide prevention. Students pick up free swag and register for prizes while learning about wellness resources on and around the campus, and about the mental-health warning signs to watch for in their classmates and themselves. Fresh Check Days are supported and organized by the Jordan Porco Foundation, which was founded in 2011 by Ernie and Marisa Porco after they lost their son, Jordan, to suicide when he was a freshman in college. The tone of the events are intentionally light and festive which Marisa Giarnella-Porco says would have appealed to her son. Jordan, she said, would not have attended a somber lecture on the topic of mental health, but may have attended a fair with an uplifting vibe, one that opens up conversation about difficult topics and lifts the cloud of mystery from the counseling center.
In an op-ed in the Daily Trojan, Trenton Stone, the President of the University Student Government at the University of Southern California, writes that all student groups should designate a director of mental well-being position that seeks to empower their members through education, connections to resources and an organizational culture of peer-to-peer caring. According to Stone, student groups are often the first line of support for students experiencing a crisis, as peers are seen as more approachable, more relatable and more accessible.
In an op-ed in Inside Higher Ed, Billie Wright Dziech, a professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, argues that colleges have oversimplified the student mental health crisis, and have overpromised on their ability to combat it. He argues that it is impossible to identify and treat all the college students who experience anxiety and depression and so colleges and universities must determine which groups they can effectively assist. He also questions how far the duty to support troubled young people should go given financial constraints, as well as higher education’s responsibility to other students as they too make their way through classroom environments and academic demands. Dziech writes that, “the danger is that when institutions overpromise, the costs can be enormous — not simply in economic but also in human terms… When mistakes in care fail, they may be catastrophic. And like it or not, few educational institutions have the funds or personnel to operate as professional health clinics any more than they can minimize their obligations to young people with other kinds of need.
Own Your Roar, a student-founded and operated organization at Towson University seeks to help student athletes struggling with mental health issues. The organization, which began as an awareness program, has unveiled a mentorship program that pairs older athletes with younger ones to help them transition to the rigors of the institution’s academic and athletic standards. Senior gymnast Olivia Lubarsky launched the initiative shortly after overcoming her own bout with depression as a freshman that she said set her back a year. Lubarsky said, “I think that part of the reason it’s been so beneficial and so successful is that it was created by student-athletes for student-athletes. When you get information from coaches and administrators, you take it in a different way. But for someone [your age] to say, ‘Hey, I’m going through it, too,’ is super helpful.”
The Harvard Athletics Department and Harvard University Health Services received an anonymous donation to provide additional mental health services for student-athletes. The gift comes one year after the launch of the Crimson Mind and Body Performance Program which offers mental health screenings, education, and care through workshops designed for student-athletes and their coaches. The program started in response to survey data collected by HUHS throughout several varsity seasons.
Stanford University has agreed to a “groundbreaking” settlement with a group of students who sought through a class action lawsuit to reform allegedly discriminatory policies affecting students in mental health crisis. Disability Rights Advocates, which brought the case on behalf of the Stanford Mental Health & Wellness Coalition and individual students, called the agreement the “most comprehensive (settlement) ever to protect college students with mental health disabilities from unnecessary exclusion.” The lawsuit alleged that Stanford repeatedly violated state and federal anti-discrimination laws in its response to students with mental health disabilities, including those who have been hospitalized for suicide attempts. Student-plaintiffs criticized Stanford’s involuntary leave of absence policy and procedures as punitive and “onerous.” Under the settlement, which is not an admission of liability, Stanford agreed to revise its involuntary leave of absence policy, ensure sufficient staffing to support students with mental health disabilities, increase training for anyone involved with implementing the policy and pay $495,000 for the plaintiffs’ legal fees.
Diversity and Inclusion
Though a federal judge ruled that there was no evidence of explicit bias in Harvard University‘s treatment of Asian-American applicants, the fight over Harvard’s race-conscious admissions process – and affirmative action nationwide – is far from done. From the beginning, the plaintiffs suing Harvard were preparing for a Supreme Court challenge that could overturn decades of precedent and outlaw affirmative action in college admissions. Harvard’s win, which upheld existing law, only makes the challenge more likely, some experts say. Additionally, there was a caveat near the bottom of judge Allison D. Burroughs’ ruling. Harvard’s admissions policy, and its use of race in admissions, withstands strict scrutiny-the highest standard of review the court uses in deciding discrimination complaints-she wrote, but “it is not perfect.” Burroughs suggested that the admissions officers should take bias training and that the university should maintain clear guidelines for how race is used in admissions. “That being said, the Court will not dismantle a very fine admissions program that passes constitutional muster, solely because it could do better.”
Training to stop bias that is implicit and not overt, commonly known as “implicit-bias training,” has been used by colleges, including on faculty-hiring committees. But its reach into admissions has been limited, and some question how it would be carried out in that domain. Lawrence Alexander, director of equity and inclusion for Carney Sandoe & Associates, an educational consulting firm said, “few, frankly, are the schools that have begun to do this work formally, though there are many who are now interested in it.”
Less than 17 percent of campus chief executives are nonwhite. Asians and Asian Americans make up just 2 percent of them, according to data from the American Council on Education. Ajay Nair, who became president of Arcadia University last year and who is Indian american, believes universities should have leaders that better reflect the backgrounds of the student bodies they serve. At the start of his tenure, Nair says he was the only person of color in the executive cabinet. Now, less than a year and a half later, 40 percent of his team are people of color, and 60 percent are women. His governing board’s racial diversity has jumped by nearly 20 percent.
Georgetown University students protested last week outside a meeting of the school’s board of directors, seeking to put pressure on the university to do more to redress historical wrongs. A student vote in April overwhelmingly called on Georgetown to create a fund to help descendants of enslaved people who were sold in the 19th century when the university was struggling to escape from debt. Slavery was so integral to the institution’s history, said Maya Moretta, a student activist with Students for GU272, that “there would be no Georgetown without it.” The impact of that can still be felt today, she said. “It’s a debt we need to pay back,” she said. Two-thirds of undergraduate students who voted in the referendum supported the proposal. The measure is not binding, but it sent a strong message to administrators.
University of South Florida is working to bridge the gap of a growing minority group on college campuses – men. It has become a national trend over the past decades that fewer men are applying to college. For every four women who are graduating from four-year colleges and universities, there are only three men. Haywood Brown, vice president of diversity, inclusion and equal opportunity, said USF has created committees, initiatives and conducted research to help combat this issue. Former USF President Judy Genshaft developed a male success presidential task force in 2015 which eventually became a permanent advisory committee consisting of eight members. Brown said “expectation bias” from guidance counselors in high school, and the lack of male role models in a young man’s life can affect how they plan their futures. “The work really starts with high school guidance counselors,” Brown said. “They are overworked, underpaid and many tend to gravitate toward students who are interested instead of the disinterested students.” Locally, Brown said he is speaking with middle and high schools to educate young men about how to be engaged in their futures.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
The federal campus-crime-reporting law known as the Clery Act requires colleges that receive federal funding to release a compilation of crime statistics each October 1 for the preceding three calendar years. Because the disclosures reflect the date that a crime is reported rather than when it is alleged to have occurred, the universities – Michigan State, Ohio State, and the University of Southern California – saw steep surges in reports of abuse, most dating to years-ago incidents. Ohio State’s new Clery report, published on Tuesday, states that more than 992 instances of fondling and 30 instances of rape were reported in 2018 against Richard H. Strauss, a team doctor for the university from 1978 to 1998. At Michigan State, the 946 rape accusations reported in 2018 against the sports physician Larry Nassar pushed its total number of rape reports to 1,013 – a record number for a university in a single year, according to an expert interviewed by the Detroit Free Press.
College Affordability
The U.S. Department of Education published its annual look at student loan default rates last week, singling out 15 higher education institutions for rates so high that they are at risk of losing their access to federal student aid. At some of these schools, more than half of students default on their loans.
New legislation in California will give community colleges access to more funding for emergency grants designed to help students continue their education in the event of unexpected financial challenges. Assembly Bill 943 opens the state’s $475.2 million Student Equity and Achievement Program to provide such assistance, which it notes could include students’ immediate need for shelter and food.
The proportion of middle-class students at colleges and universities has been declining, sharply enough that some institutions have started publicly announcing special scholarships to cover all or most of their tuition. It may seem counterintuitive to hear that efforts to increase diversity include enrolling more students from the middle class, as opposed to those from families with the lowest incomes but the proportion of students on college campuses from the lowest-income families is going up. The Pew Research Center reports that the share of students from the middle has fallen in the last two decades from 48 percent to 42 percent at private, nonprofit institutions, and from 48 percent to 40 percent at public four-year universities. At the most selective institutions, middle-class students have been displaced by wealthier ones, according to a study by the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute.
Greek Life
Ohio University administrators this week suspended 15 fraternities amid allegations of hazing, shutting down all events and activities at the chapters until further notice. University spokeswoman Carly Leatherwood said it was in response to an escalation of allegations within a 48-hour period against seven chapters, prompting the need for a collective pause. In a letter to Interfraternity chapter presidents Thursday, Jenny Hall-Jones, senior associate vice president and dean of students, wrote about the new reports, “These troubling allegations, which will be thoroughly investigated, indicate a potentially escalating systemic culture within our IFC organizations, and Ohio University will not put at risk the health and safety of our students.”
