Mental and Behavioral Health
This year, Anna Hope Emerson, a Yale University student, started The Yale Layer, an undergraduate publication dedicated to mental health. The publication launched its first issue this semester and followed up with a second issue in November. Emerson recognized a need for “increased conversation around mental health and wellness” at Yale after the op-ed she wrote about her own experience received feedback from many students who thanked her for bringing attention to mental health.
This month, the Georgetown University Student Association presented Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson with a proposal for a pilot program to subsidize off-campus mental health care. The plan would support 40 students’ off-campus therapy, providing up to $850 per student, or $34,000 to the program, annually. Additionally, the proposal calls for Georgetown to allocate financial resources to fund off-campus mental health services for students who have demonstrated financial need.
University of Northwestern – St. Paul, an evangelical Christian college, held a disability awareness week in November, which included a panel about experiences with mental health. Ruth Fries, CAPSS services specialist at Northwestern said, “The goal of it is to bring about that awareness and understanding, hopefully open up some honest and real conversations. God created us all uniquely, and we all experience the world a little bit differently, and how does that look to walk alongside and support each other.”
Last week, four Yale LGBT undergraduates shared their personal experiences with mental health during a panel discussion organized by Mind Matters, Yale’s undergraduate mental health awareness and activism group. The goal of the panel was to promote understanding of the intersection between gender, sexuality and mental health.
The University of Missouri Health Center offers an online program focused on self-image called “Body U.” The program begins with an evaluation that ascertains behavior and self-image, then creates a custom program with self-help modules guided by online coaches or counselors covering fitness, healthy eating, coping skills, anxiety reduction and self-evaluation.
Anxiety is the leading mental health issue among college students. The Chronicle of Higher Education has partnered with Active Minds, a nonprofit group focused on campus mental health, to share students’ experiences of anxiety. A new video features five students explaining how they cope, what they’d like their professors to know, and what they think their peers need to hear.
The conversation around stress and mental health at University of Pennsylvania has remained prominent throughout 2017. The Daily Pennsylvanian explores the reasons why it was a landmark year for discussing mental health at Penn. These included the death of seven students by suicide, and the instability introduced by national policy changes.
Diversity and Inclusion
Over the past several years, students and professors across the country have demanded that statues honoring Confederates be removed. In response, colleges have renamed buildings, removed and relocated statues, and investigated their historical ties to slavery. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this work has taken on a sense of urgency as protesters gather almost daily at the foot of “Silent Sam,” a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier that has stood at the main entrance to the school since 1913.
This semester, Harvard University’s Diversity Peer Educators expanded on-campus programming and outreach after doubling in size last year. The group of trained student facilitators hosted a series of on-campus dialogues and started developing trainings for Peer Advising Fellows.
After more than a year of deliberation, Harvard University is going ahead with its plan to bar members of unsanctioned single-gender social groups, including fraternities, sororities and final clubs, from opportunities such as leadership positions in campus organizations and recommendations for awards like the Rhodes Scholarship. The decision was made to ensure an inclusive environment for an increasingly diverse student body, and to prevent sexual assault at parties at which men serve as gatekeepers. Since first announcing their plans in May 2016, administrators have been faced with pushback over their role in policing the social activities of their students. The Boston Globe reports that Harvard sorority women feel they are being unfairly impacted by the behaviors of their male counterparts in fraternities.
The president’s’ house at Colby College in Maine has been renamed to honor the legacy of Samuel Osborne, a janitor at the school who was formerly enslaved.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
Callisto, a software platform for secure online reporting of sexual abuse and harassment, is currently in use on 12 campuses. The platform is designed to increase reporting as well as accuracy. It can also help identify repeat offenders, who research has shown commit the majority of sexual assaults.
The Chronicle traced the outcomes of 15 cases of sexual harassment accusations and investigations on college campuses.
Free Speech
A new report published in The Journal of Higher Education, examined differences in protests among higher-education institutions. The study “Beyond the Incident: Institutional Predictors of Student Collective Action”, suggests that campus protests advocating for diversity occur more frequently at elite colleges and those with fewer students receiving Pell Grants.
Hampshire College in Massachusetts is apologizing for canceling a speech by Antonia Okafor, an advocate of guns on college campuses. She says the college canceled her speech two hours before it was scheduled because it was “too controversial.” The school says the event was canceled because the “student application was not sufficiently complete.”
Student Success
Richard V. Reeves a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Dream Hoarders, argues in The Chronicle that American higher education, once called “the great equalizer”, has perpetuated class divisions across generations. The proportion of low-income students at four-year and selective institutions has not increased since the early 2000s.
In the Washington Post, Anthony P. Carnevale, director and research professor of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, argues that The PROSPER Act empowers students and parents with information they need to make better decisions about their education investments. The proposed legislation would provide higher education consumers with data on earnings outcomes of academic programs and college majors. Information would include completion rates, loan repayment rates and the average earnings for each program, allowing students and parents to compare cost and earnings in the same major at different schools.
Mark C. Hampton, vice president for planning, analytics and decision support at New York Institute of Technology, wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post that college administrators should use the large amount of data they collect (on academic performance, eating habits, social life and daily routines) to identify students at risk of dropping out, and intervene with additional support if needed.
Policy
In The Atlantic, Jason Blakely, an assistant professor of political philosophy at Pepperdine University, provides a history of the “culture war” between the the ideological Right and the country’s colleges and universities.
The US House of Representatives and Senate are working to reconcile their versions of a tax reform bill. According to the American Council on Education, as reported by NPR, the House bill cuts or reduces higher education tax benefits that together are worth about $6.5 billion a year to students and families.
As reported in the Washington Post, House Republicans are pressing ahead with an overhaul of The Higher Education Act, the federal law that governs almost every aspect of higher education, without any public hearings and despite mounting pressure to provide more time and input. University, student and consumer groups are pleading with the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to slow the process down. These calls have largely been ignored, however, and Republicans have included more controversial provisions, including one that gives the education secretary flexibility to cut off federal grants to students and one that bars campuses from regulating fraternities and sororities.
