Mental and Behavioral Health
College campuses nationwide have seen an increase in the enrollment of student veterans. A new initiative at SUNY New Paltz, Dutchess Community College and 13 other SUNY campuses seeks to improve the ability of college health care providers to serve returning veterans by training them on how military culture clashes with college culture, and guiding them to work with young vets, understanding their expectations, needs, and worldviews. “The differences between military culture and the culture on many university campuses can be stark at times and as a result, military-affiliated students can feel that campus services are not designed to meet their needs,” said Amy Nitza, director of the Institute for Disaster Mental Health at SUNY New Paltz.
Professionals from Cornell University Health Center and the school’s Title IX Office, as well as student leaders from organizations such as Cornell Minds Matter and La Asociación Latina participated in “The I of the Storm: Finding Calm Amongst Chaos“, a summit focused on the mental health issues faced by women of color. Workshops included on topics body image, student activism and relationship.
At the University of Michigan, the Center for Global and Intercultural Study, Active Minds and International Programs in Engineering partnered to increase awareness of and facilitate conversation about how studying abroad may impact one’s mental health through a panel discussion last week.
The Daily Nebraskan highlighted the story of Molly Chapple Roe, a first-generation master’s student, who struggled with her mental health as an undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The Ohio State University is highlighting progress made in implementing recommendations from the Suicide and Mental Health Task Force. One of the early efforts includes the addition of three new counselor positions in Counseling and Consultation Service this year. The Stress, Trauma and Resilience program is working to have a case manager and counselor in the counseling center by spring. In addition, the Wexner Medical Center is creating a new intensive behavioral health outpatient program for people age 18 to 25 and the Undergraduate Student Government is launching a pilot program offering 1,000 students subscriptions to a guided meditation app.
A 2018 graduate of Yale University has sued the school, several officials and Yale New Haven Hospital, claiming that she was involuntarily held at the hospital after she admitted herself for depression, and that Yale forced her to withdraw from the university. The plaintiff, a female senior who was living on campus, claimed a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Fair Housing Act. She was later reinstated at Yale and graduated in 2018, the lawsuit states.
Diversity and Inclusion
In the Washington Post, George Mason University President Ángel Cabrera responds to a report showing weakness in the international academic pipeline. He argues that while other countries are working to attract international students, the United States has managed to send a message that talented foreigners are unwelcome. According to Cabrera, “International students don’t take away resources from American students. On the contrary, they create economic value and jobs, contribute to talent pools in critical disciplines, pump resources into our universities, and enrich our campuses intellectually and culturally.” He argues that we must reassure the world that U.S universities remain open and eager to engage with the best minds, wherever they come from.
Nearly 280 hate crimes were reported in 2017 to the FBI by select campus police departments, up from 257 in 2016 and 194 in 2015. The largest year-to-year increases in hate crimes reported to the FBI, in terms of motivating bias, occurred in crimes against multiracial victims, African-Americans, and Jews.
Anita Moss, a lecturer at the University of Texas at San Antonio called campus police on a black student who had put her feet on chairs during class. In a video shared on Twitter on Monday, a cluster of police officers appear in the classroom and Moss points at a black female student sitting in a middle row. When approached by one officer, the student calmly stands and gathers her things. She and the officers walk out of the classroom. After investigating the incident, the University of Texas at San Antonio said that Moss displayed “poor judgment” but won’t be terminated. The affected student feels that Moss’s actions were not motivated by racial bias, and she decided not to file a formal complaint of discrimination. University president Taylor Eighmy said that racial bias “was not a factor in the actions of the faculty member,” but conceded that “Beyond this particular incident, I am very much aware that the circumstance represents another example of the work we need to do as an institution around issues of inclusivity and supporting our students of color.”
Diversity courses help sensitize students to a wide range of cultural backgrounds and outlooks, and many colleges include them in their general-education requirements. But, according to a new paper, because of the sometimes-tense subject matter, faculty members who teach those courses often bear a particularly heavy emotional load that isn’t generally recognized or compensated for. The authors of the paper, which was presented at Association for the Study of Higher Education’s annual meeting, urge colleges and universities to prepare academics for that burden, and to acknowledge, document, and reward it.
A law professor and an Asian-American politician are suing the University of California for data they believe would reveal that the state university system is illegally using race in its admissions process. The suit, filed in a California state court, asks for the socioeconomic and academic characteristics of applicants who enrolled in the nine undergraduate colleges that make up the University of California over the last 12 years. Richard Sander, an economist and law professor at UCLA who brought the court action, has been researching race-based admissions for years.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
A lawsuit brought by
seven women accuses
Dartmouth College of allowing three prominent professors to create a culture in their department that encouraged drunken parties and subjected female students to
harassment, groping and sexual assault. For more than a decade, the lawsuit contends, female students in the school’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences “have been treated as sex objects by tenured professors Todd Heatherton, William Kelley, and Paul Whalen. These professors leered at, groped, sexted, intoxicated, and even raped female students.” The
lawsuitdescribes a culture in which well-regarded professors who helped build a powerhouse department at the Ivy League school acted with impunity and repeatedly mistreated students who were dependent on their academic support. It asserts that professors regularly held professional lab meetings in bars, invited students to late-night hot-tub parties, and conditioned academic support on participation in a hard-drinking party culture and tolerance of unwanted sexual attention.
Friday,
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos unveiled the highly anticipated overhaul of the rules governing
campus sexual assault, reducing the liability of colleges and universities for investigating sexual misconduct claims and bolstering the due process rights of defendants, including the right to cross-examine their accusers. The rules would be the first
regulations to govern how schools should meet their legal obligations under Title IX. The regulations will now face a 60-day public comment period before they are final.
Students who receive
sexuality education, including refusal skills training, before college matriculation are at lower risk of experiencing sexual assault during college, according to new research published today in PLOS ONE. The latest publication from Columbia University’s Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation (SHIFT) project suggests that sexuality education during high school may also have a lasting and protective effect for teens.
Former students who have told of sexual abuse by a former
Ohio State Universityteam doctor appealed in person to the school’s trustees for the first time last week, pleading with them not to dismiss or minimize their allegations. Seven accusers of Dr. Richard Strauss told the board that the now-dead physician’s actions have caused them long-term harm. They described the incidents occurring during team physicals, while being treated for injuries and during routine medical exams at the student health center. Ohio State President Michael Drake told the men, three of whom spoke anonymously, that their stories were being heard and respected.
Physical Health
Aiming to improve student health, Duke University researchers plan to launch a smartwatch pilot next year. Incoming first-year students will use digital health wearable devices to track their activity and sleep in an effort to promote healthier habits.
Sexual Health
A student group at Syracuse University is hoping to improve sexual health on campus with a vending machine that would stock wellness products like condoms, pads and tampons, tissues, Advil, Midol, and pregnancy tests, some of which would be free to students. The machine would sell an emergency contraceptive similar to Plan B at a discounted rate.
In a Letter to the Editor of The Miami Student, Miami University student Alexandria Doty argues that the student health center should expand healthcare access for female students. Doty contends that the health center does offer important women’s health-related services. She claims that there is one nurse practitioner available to serve the approximately 8,000 women that attend Miami with any women-centric health needs, including birth control, sexually transmitted infections and abortion or prenatal referrals.
College Affordability
A new study found that student loans helped recipients earn better grades, take more classes and graduate sooner. The five-year research project, which followed 20,000 students at an urban community college, found that taking out loans averaging $4,000 enabled the students to work less and study more while also providing a cushion against emergencies.
In a New York Times op-ed, Michael Bloomberg explains his $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins University, which will be used for financial aid for qualified low- and middle-income students. According to Bloomberg, Hopkins has made great progress toward becoming “need-blind” – admitting students based solely on merit. He writes, “I want to be sure that the school that gave me a chance will be able to permanently open that same door of opportunity for others.” Bloomberg also argues that too many qualified students from low- and middle-income families are being shut out and as a country, we should tackle this challenge and open doors of opportunity to more students.
Substance Use
In an op-ed in the Daily Trojan, Rachel McKenzie argues that there should be a greater emphasis on substance abuse prevention on college campuses, including at the University of Southern California. According to McKenzie, University Student Health services encourages those who believe they have a problem or who are struggling to reach out for help, but they fail to account for those who may not know that they have an issue. She writes that a proactive approach can make the difference between a fun, harmless college experience and a lifetime of battling a debilitating dependence on alcohol.
Hunger and Homelessness
In a Chronicle interactive report, five students describe their struggles with food and housing insecurity and discuss what colleges can do to help.
Student Success
Marvin Krislov, President of Pace University, writes in Forbes that colleges and universities have an obligation to make sure that all qualified students, regardless of their economic or cultural background, have the opportunity to apply for and succeed in college, which is a key driver of professional success in life. Krislov highlights the outreach programs at Pace, including working directly with high schools to help with college preparedness and a curriculum customized for its low-income community.
A new study found that students, particularly African-American women, who take more remedial courses, who repeat courses, and who withdraw from courses at community colleges are more likely to almost but not quite finish their degrees. They found that a community-college student who has earned at least 45 credits, repeated 11 or more courses, and withdrawn from five or more courses should be considered at risk. The authors Yu (April) Chen, an assistant professor of education at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, and Xiaodan Hu, an assistant professor of higher education at Northern Illinois University, recommend that colleges be alert to those patterns and intervene to help those students find more-constructive educational pathways.
