Mental and Behavioral Health
NPR profiles Crisis Text Line, a nonprofit that provides free crisis intervention through text messaging. Volunteer counselors complete 30 hours of training before they are able to log into the platform and exchange messages with people facing issues from stress at school to self-harm. So far, counselors have exchanged more than 50 million messages and completed thousands of “active rescues” where first responders are called to a scene.
In an op-ed in the University of Texas student newspaper, UT student David Howell argues that the campus community must “honestly confront the culture of stigma surrounding mental health” and “be conduits between mental health services and suffering friends by referring friends to existing services and lobbying for accessible, affordable ones”. Howell reverences a University Health Services study released early this year that showed that, over the previous twelve months, 1.1 percent of students, or 561 people, had attempted suicide, 5.5 percent of students, or 12,291 people, had considered suicide.
According to an article in the Duke Chronicle, some students believe the university administration is not prioritizing student mental health. Student Thomas Klug, president of Peer for You, a group that provides mental health advice to students who are able to remain anonymous, said “The administration and Duke as a whole can do a better job of understanding students’ mental health needs. I think Duke often treats mental illnesses as more of a liability than as something it needs to address. It would rather sweep the issues under the rug than try to deal with them.”
Diversity and Inclusion
Students of color are calling on the University of Colorado Boulder to better support diversity on campus. At a school where two-thirds of the student population is white, many muslim and DACA students in particular feel that there is a culture of indifference and ignorance. CU system spokesman Ken McConnellogue says the leadership is deeply committed to diversity. “It is always on President Benson’s mind,” he said. “Whenever there are leadership positions open, diversity is something we all strongly consider. Diversity is one of our guiding principles.”
In March, researchers at the University of California published a study that linked the “legitimizing effect” of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program with participants’ improved psychological well-being in California. Caitlin Patler, assistant professor of sociology at UC Davis and co-author of the study said, (DACA) has “opened the door to so many opportunities and possibilities. They (DACA students) know how life can be.” Patler theorizes that the federal government’s impending termination of the DACA program could diminish the mental wellbeing of these recipients to worse than before the program began.
The University of Maryland at College Park announced this week their decision to hire a full-time “hate-bias response coordinator” as part of a broader effort to upgrade its procedures for responding to reports of bias on the campus. The administration says the decision reflects the new normal that has taken hold in higher education, where white supremacists and other hate groups are targeting college campuses. The coordinator will manage a bias-response team, meet with students affected by hate incidents, and help design training on diversity and inclusion issues.
Student Safety
On October, a female student was followed into a residence hall at the University of Washington and sexually assaulted. Despite the incident, staff and students largely remain confident in the safety of UW housing. According to Chris Jaehne, director of Residential Life, incidents like the assault are “very unusual” and something that had seldom occurred in his 25 years working for the UW. The university once considered stationing security personnel at all the entrances of the residence halls, but the idea was too costly.
Free Speech
Lucian Wintrich, a correspondent working for the provocative conservative website The Gateway Pundit, was arrested on Tuesday at the University of Connecticut where he had been speaking. Video of the incident shows him following and grabbing a woman who had taken papers off the lectern he was using. He was led out of the lecture hall by authorities.
The Wall Street Journal reports on the proposal within the House GOP Higher Education Act which mandates that schools disclose policies that limit where and when free speech occurs. The goal is to limit “free speech zones”, which the act calls “inherently at odds with the First Amendment.” Of the proposal, Joe Cohn, the legislative and policy director for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education said, “It’s a good development. Congress is starting to think about what it can do to advance Constitutional rights on college campuses—in particular free speech.”
James O’Keefe, is the founder and president of Project Veritas, which was behind a recent “sting operation” that tried, and failed to reveal substandard reporting practices at The Washington Post. An employee of Project Veritas offered the Post fake claims of sexual assault against Roy S. Moore, Alabama’s embattled Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, seemingly hoping to reveal bias by the news organization. However, the strategy backfired when the Post wrote an exposé on the operation instead of publishing her story. O’Keefe spoke this week at Southern Methodist University at the invitation of Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative student group.
Greek Life
WBUR profiles Mu Delta Alpha, a Muslim sorority at the University of Texas at Austin as an example of the growth of Muslim sororities across the country.
College Affordability
Derek Thompson argues in The Atlantic that the GOP’s tax-reform proposal is “part of a broader Republican war on higher education in the U.S.” In order to pay for a permanent tax cut on corporations, the tax plan raises taxes on colleges and college students, and would reduce benefits for higher education by more than $60 billion over ten years. Thompson argues that the plan will force schools to raise tuition at a time when higher education costs are already unaffordable for many, and reminds readers that higher education has been the most important long-term driver of wage growth.
Education Policy
According to the Wall Street Journal, the proposed reauthorization of the Higher Education Act by the House Republicans would be the biggest overhaul of education policy in decades. While the Act still sets aside about $600 million in grants for colleges that serve large populations of minority students, it will include several caveats. In order for any of the 1,700 eligible minority-serving, historically black and developing Hispanic-serving institutions schools to obtain these funds, they must graduate or transfer at least 25% of their students. This will represent the first time that Congress ties the grant money to a completion benchmark.
The legislation would also revamp the federal student-loan program, implementing an unspecified cap on borrowing by parents and students, and eliminating some loan-forgiveness programs for students. Previously, students and parents have been able to borrow whatever schools charge.
Substance Abuse
Connecticut College has been awarded a grant from the Connecticut Healthy Campus Initiative (CHCI) to implement an opioid education and awareness program on campus. The school will provide students and staff with training and information on safe medication storage and disposal, provide training on the administration of Naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal drug, and expand substance abuse prevention strategies.
Parents
Miriam Metzinger, editor for the financial website Seeking Alpha, wrote in the Texas A&M student newspaper that although almost 5 million students are raising children across the country, college student health services provide very little information on pregnancy. A survey found that only 15% of students had seen any material posted around campus providing support for pregnant students. Further, Metzinger writes, colleges seldom provide daycare for students, and many force pregnant women to live off-campus after their second trimester.
