Mental and Behavioral Health
Virginia Tech’s Peer Assistance for Learning (PAL) program hosted a Mind and Body Check Fair to identify students with potential mental health concerns. The PAL program helps close the gap between the number of students who have mental health concerns and the number who actually seek help.
After the success of the University of Vermont’s Rally Around Mental Health, an initiative created to bring awareness to student athlete mental health, the school is opening the Catamount Sport Psychology and Counseling, a joint initiative between the Center for Health and Wellbeing and UVM athletics. Read more about the unique concerns of student athlete mental health in the Mary Christie Quarterly article on Athletes Connected, a similar program at the University of Michigan.
A University of Pennsylvania student’s art project that includes the names of the 14 students who died by suicide on campus has been criticized as insensitive and sensational. However, some experts say that not talking about suicide on high-pressure campuses like Penn’s can be worse than bringing these issues to light through art.
The University of Michigan hosted its first ever mental health week, including events like “Head Talks,” TED-style talks about mindfulness, mental health, and positive psychology.
The New York Times Magazine seeks to answer the question “Why are more American teenagers than ever suffering from severe anxiety?”
Diversity and Inclusion
The University of Idaho’s student body government voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution in support of transgender and non-binary students using their preferred names on student accounts, transcripts, and diplomas. Shawn O’Neal, UI’s director of student involvement, commended their decision.
The Chronicle explores the rise of white supremacist recruiting on college campuses in an interview with Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
Recent research on “summer melt” found that 20 to 30 percent of low-income graduates of urban school districts who had been accepted by — and planned to attend — four-year colleges didn’t end up enrolling anywhere. The Chronicle reports on low-income students on the last leg of their journey to college.
Alexys Barret, a Southern Connecticut State University student claims that she was turned away from a Yale party because of her race. The party was hosted by Leo, a resurrection of the school’s disbanded Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. “He [the LEO doorman] said that they only allow students inside that have Yale IDs or are accompanied by someone with a Yale ID, which is fine if that is what they were actually practicing that night,” Barret said. “But they did not ask me for an ID. They just turned me away.”
Sexual Assault and Title IX
The Michigan State University student body government passed a bill to create an endowment for survivors of sexual assault to receive financial support at the discretion of counselors through MSU’s sexual assault office. The Hughey Fund will start with $5,000 that can be distributed to cover the financial cost associated with assault and reporting. ”Maybe that means you need to be able to break a lease and get away from your attacker,” said Max Donovan, the student government Finance Chair. “Maybe that means that you need anti-HIV prophylactics. Maybe that means you have a relative that assaulted you, and your family doesn’t know about it, and you need to get your own motel room so you don’t have to sleep with them.”
Georgetown’s chapter of Take Back the Night, the national anti-sexual violence group, launched a petition to maintain the university’s sexual assault policies despite recent Title IX rollbacks from the Department of Education.
Substance Abuse
In an op-ed for the Daily Princetonian, sophomore Liam O’Connor counters a previous op-ed arguing for a lower drinking age. “His position is myopic,” O’Connor writes. “What Snow doesn’t — and other college students don’t — realize is that the minimum drinking age law is one of the most rigorously studied public health laws in the country.” He cites Frostburg State University as an example of a school that has “greatly lowered underage drinking rates by enforcing the law all while maintaining their tolerance programs that give medical attention to dangerously intoxicated students.” Read our Q&A with the school’s former president, Jonathan Gibralter, who put the alcohol policies in place.
The Michigan Daily takes a close look at what it means for students to address or maintain their addiction on campus. Read more about the campus recover movement in the Mary Christie Quarterly profile of The Haven at College.
According to a recent survey at DePauw University, more than one-third of students reported consuming over six drinks. “This is a huge issue on our campus and actually a really big potential risk,” said Julia Sutherlin, assistant dean of campus life and director of alcohol initiatives.
Janie Kritzman, whose son fatally overdosed at Indiana University, writes that colleges must take more action to protect their students from opioid abuse. “The opioid crisis, rooted in the overprescribing of painkillers, has seized the attention of public officials,” she writes. “So, too, has the inadequacy of mental health services on college campuses become well documented. But so far, neither policymakers nor college administrators have connected the dots between the painkiller epidemic and the crisis of young people on campus with more access to narcotics than to care, although the connections are right before their eyes.
Physical Health
The University of Missouri will use a grant from the American Cancer Society to strengthen enforcement of their campus smoking ban. About 16 percent of MU students smoke, and about half want to quit but don’t know where to find resources to help them do so.
The mumps outbreak at Syracuse University expanded to 14 students, including members of men’s and women’s lacrosse teams. SU Athletics has cancelled practices for both teams for a minimum of three weeks.
Guns on Campus
A Texas Tech student fatally shot a campus police officer who had apprehended him after finding drugs and drug paraphernalia in his room. Texas recently legalized campus carry.
