Mental and Behavioral Health
In an op-ed in the Daily Trojan, University of Southern California student Rachel McKenzie argues that while the university is responding to increased demand for mental health services by making institutional improvements, these changes alone will not “effectively shift the perspectives of students in need.” McKenzie argues that USC should take a more creative and personal approach to addressing the mental health of the student body by hiring students to help counsel their peers.
Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania and the co-author of The Case for Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools wrote an op-ed in the
Chronicle in response to the recent events at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — the removal the last remains of its “Silent Sam” Confederate memorial by Chancellor Carol Holt, who said she was acting to protect the safety of the UNC community. Zimmerman argues that while the university has a duty to safeguard its students from violence, like that which broke out last summer after demonstrators pulled Silent Sam off its pedestal, it has no duty to protect people from ideas they find offensive or distasteful. According to Zimmerman, “Most of the protesters have insisted that the monument – not the controversy over it – endangers their safety. Their concern isn’t the potential violence triggered by Silent Sam; instead, it’s that the monument itself is a form of violence against them.”
The 2018 Center for Collegiate Mental Health (CCMH) Annual Report, released last week, found that college students seeking treatment continue to identify anxiety and depression as the most common concerns for seeking treatment. For the first time in five years, anxiety did not increase in prevalence whereas depression increased slightly again. The average rate of self-reported “threat-to-self ” characteristics increased for the eighth year in a row among students seeking treatment.’ Ben Locke, senior director of Penn State Counseling and Psychological Services, and executive director of CCMH, said of the increased demand for mental health services, “Institutions must be creative and holistic in their response to a new level of demand that will not go away; but must not forget that we actively worked to create the very demand we are seeing, and our first job is to grow service capacity quickly in order to effectively support, and treat, students who are identified and referred.”
The report also suggests the emphasis on getting students into therapy as soon as possible may be misguided and ultimately less effective. Using data from 118 college counseling centers in the United States, the researchers examined two common models of care: the access model, where students are assigned to counselors as soon as possible, even if the counselor had a full caseload, and the treatment model, in which students wait until therapists have an opening. Both models include immediate services for students who are suicidal. Researchers found that students at universities using a treatment model saw their therapist more often, waited fewer days between appointments, and had a greater reduction in symptoms. While an access model gets students into care for a first appointment sooner, counselors with too many patients often are unable to follow up with each of them regularly. It is clear that counseling centers are stretching to try to accommodate the growing demand for services and prioritizing rapid access to care. However, this report highlights the negative impact these efforts can have, like providing a decreased dosage of treatment and less effective service. According to Locke, “while it is critically important that counseling centers are responsive to the growing number of students who are identified and referred, it is equally important for institutions to recognize the value of policies that support effective treatment of students in distress.”
Jefferson Community College is one of seven institutions to receive the Healthy Campus Award from Active Minds, a nonprofit organization focused on mental-health awareness and action. Jefferson Community College approaches mental health as a part of a students’ overall well-being, which means providing services that are outside the traditional realm of mental health. This requires an “all-in” approach from the institution. According to Katy Troester-Trate, the school’s interim dean of students, success starts with listening to what students need. “It’s not just mental health these students are struggling with,” she said. “It’s never just one thing.” When students said they needed food, the college started a food pantry. They said they needed transportation, so the school provides bus tickets and works with a local nonprofit transportation service that bills the center per mile. They needed options for child care, so the school provided vouchers worth up to three hours of care at a local drop-in daycare center. “If we don’t meet the basic needs of students, we can’t hope to meet the higher-level needs,” Troester-Trate said. Laura Horne, director of programs for Active Minds, told the Chronicle, “The whole university should be involved in supporting student well-being – especially mental health. It should not be seen as the sole responsibility of the mental-health center.”
To increase their efforts to advance the wellbeing of their students, Tufts University was selected as the first recipient of a new scholarship established by the HBC Foundation to join JED Campus, a nationwide initiative to help colleges and universities assess and improve existing mental health, substance abuse, and suicide prevention efforts. Michelle Bowdler, executive director of Health and Wellness at Tufts, said that support is more than just about adding more staff. “We have to engage the community on mental health issues and stress reduction overall. We are trying to foster a community of care. That is how JED looks at mental health, and how we are looking at it as well.”
Diversity and Inclusion
Incarcerated Americans have been excluded from the federal Pell Grant program since 1994, when President Bill Clinton signed a sweeping crime bill that enacted the ban. Penn Grants are the most widely used form of financial aid for low-income students. According to a new report published last week by the Georgetown Law School’s Center on Poverty and Inequality and the Vera Institute of Justice, reopening that pathway would allow hundreds of thousands of people to take college courses, creating “a cascade of economic benefits.” With access to Pell Grants, the report says, more incarcerated people could afford to take college classes while in prison. When they are released, they’d be less likely to reoffend and more likely to look for work. Businesses would have a larger pool of potential job applicants, the report says, and more former prisoners would get better-paying jobs.
According to a new report from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, graduation rates of community-college transfers meet or exceed those of students who enroll at selective institutions as first-time freshman. Community-college transfers also graduate at higher rates than students who transfer from other four-year colleges. But according to Jennifer Glynn, the director of research at the foundation, “There is an underrepresentation issue.” Selective colleges don’t enroll a lot of transfer students.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill urged a federal judge last week to reject allegations of illegal racial bias in the public university’s admissions process and ruled in its favor without allowing the lawsuit to go to trial. The plaintiff in the case – a group opposed to affirmative action called Students for Fair Admissions – also asked the judge to bypass a trial. The group said evidence showed that UNC gives too much weight to race and ethnicity in its admission process and has not given adequate consideration to race-blind strategies for enrolling a diverse class.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
John M. Engler, interim president of Michigan State University, announced last week that he would resign. Earlier in the week, board members condemned Engler’s comments that survivors of sexual abuse are “enjoying” the “spotlight.” Engler’s appointment last January came at the height of a crisis for Michigan State amid revelations that Larry Nassar, a former university sports doctor, had for years sexually abused girls and women under the guise of medical treatment. Engler’s tenure, however, was tumultuous. Within a few months of taking office, Engler was accused of offering a cash payoff to a survivor, and his emails reveal he claimed an abuse victim was probably getting paid for the “manipulation” of other survivors.
In a court filing last week, Dartmouth College‘s trustees claim that they did not knowingly allow three professors in the department of psychological and brain sciences to sexually harass and assault students. The trustees were responding to allegations in a lawsuit filed in November by seven current and former students. The students said that the college had not protected them from the professors’ abuse, and that college leaders had failed to act once the alleged misconduct was brought to their attention.
Nearly two years into the University of Minnesota President’s Initiative to Prevent Sexual Misconduct, school officials see signs of success. The initiative, which costs the university more than $740,000, features a wide-range of efforts, including mandated employee training and increasing bystander intervention. Last spring, the University implemented required sexual misconduct training for all faculty and staff systemwide. The school has also revamped online sexual assault prevention training for students, launched a public awareness campaign and started a series of sexual harassment workshops for department heads and academic leaders. Maggie Towle, interim vice provost for student affairs and dean of students said that the University is now planning trainings with specific communities on campus, including Greek life and athletics. Officials leading the initiative say they’ve received widespread support and crucial buy-in from faculty, staff and students on campus.
Sexual Health
Yale University has dropped plans to install a vending machine that dispenses birth control products because it would have been in violation of Connecticut state law. The “wellness-to-go” vending machine for Silliman College, which was proposed in the fall by a member of the Reproductive Justice Action League at Yale, would have dispensed Plan B emergency contraception and other over-the-counter items. Under state law, over-the-counter medications cannot be sold in a vending machine. In response, university health services will now allow students to obtain Plan B for free without having to first talk to a clinician.
Greek Life
Pennsylvania State University is creating a center to study Greek life, named in memory of Timothy Piazza, who died after a pledging event at the Beta Theta Pi fraternity chapter house in 2017. Police said his friends failed to call for help when he fell multiple times after consuming toxic amounts of alcohol. Penn State’s president, Eric J. Barron, said in a statement that universities have been missing critical information about Greek life, and the interdisciplinary center can help provide nationwide assessments and information about how to improve fraternity and sorority culture and rules. According to Barron, “The Piazza Center will provide an essential leadership role to compel the collective change required.”
