Mental and Behavioral Health
In an op-ed in the Crimson White, University of Alabama student Jessica Fulwider writes that it is important that the university supply students with modern and innovative options for help while at school. Fulwider believes that the University should create a mandatory class that teaches all incoming students about the causes and symptoms of mental illnesses.
In response to the lawsuit brought by the parents of Luke Z. Tang ’18, three years after his death by suicide, The Crimson Editorial Board called on Harvard University to take a cooperative role in students’ treatment process and to provide transparency about its policies surrounding mental health. The Editorial Board argues that while Harvard has every right to require students with mental health issues to seek treatment, the University must also recognize that these students may not be able to easily accomplish the requirements it sets forth. And in order to ensure that students with mental illnesses are being treated fairly and with dignity, students should have a say in any necessary contracts regarding their treatment.
At a rally on Northwestern University‘s campus, student activists lambasted the school’s handling of mental health issues and urged for increased inclusion and transparency in helping students cope with mental health problems. The students presented a list of demands to Vice President for Student Affairs Patricia Telles-Irvin. The rally follows what protestors called a concerning years-long pattern of inaction and apathy regarding students’ struggle with mental health and student suicides. Students said the school needs to focus on increasing diversity in its counseling staff, and that Northwestern’s preoccupation with its prestige comes at the sake of students’ well-being.
A tragedy at Brigham Young University last week has opened up a conversation about mental health on campus. A woman died after falling from the fourth floor of a campus building. The death was deemed a suicide. After the incident, an anonymous letter surfaced on campus calling into question the university’s policies regarding mental health. The emotional letter, addressed to Brigham Young University, said, ‘If I killed myself today, would the university mourn my death? Would you ask yourselves why this happened, or simply say this couldn’t be helped? Would my death mean anything or would I simply become part of your empty statistic, of the forgotten students who have already taken their lives this year?’ People on campus say BYU’s counseling center has been “understaffed” and “overbooked” for months. “I think that there’s definitely a problem here,” said Jacob Payne, a freshman. “I think the problem is BYU doesn’t allocate enough resources.”
Hundreds of graduate students at Cornell have signed a petition urging the university to improve mental health services. Last week, 100 students gathered for a rally organized by Cornell Graduate Students United calling for several demands to improve mental health on campus including an external, public review of mental health services. “While I’ve been here on campus I’ve learned there are some really valuable mental health resources here, but unfortunately in their current state, they can only really reach a few graduate students, and basically only if you’re in crisis,” said Thea Kozakis, a Ph.D. student in the department of astronomy and space sciences.
A student reported to the University of Massachusetts Amherst chapter of Active Minds that the Center for Counseling and Psychological Health had stopped accepting patients for one-on-one therapy. Emily Dykstra, the president of the Active Minds chapter looked into the issue, finding that CCPH was looking to fill staffing vacancies to meet increasing student demand for counseling. However, interim co-director of CCPH Melissa Rotkiewicz, Psy.D. emphasized that the increases in demand for mental health services is not a problem the University can “hire our way out of.” According to Rotkiewicz, given the limited supply of therapists, one-on-one treatment levels are “difficult to attain not just here but across the country.” In recent years, CCPH has sought to re-conceptualize people’s expectations of therapy and mental health treatment. While students are offered up to four sessions per academic year through student fees, this isn’t necessarily in the form of one-on-one therapy. “There isn’t enough capacity to have everyone go to individualized therapy,” Rotkiewicz said. Likening mental health treatment to “packing a toolbox,” Rotkiewicz explained different individuals respond to different treatments and that it’s important to stay open to other paths besides individualized therapy. The school hopes to resume individual counseling services next semester.
Diversity and Inclusion
Following a decision by University of North Carolina leaders to return the Confederate monument Silent Sam to campus, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Chapel Hill last week, furious about what some called a $5 million shrine to white supremacy. At least 79 teaching assistants and instructors have joined a rare “grade strike,” pledging to withhold more than 2,000 final grades unless the university meets their conditions.
A video showing a young white man on the Columbia University campus spouting white supremacist remarks at a group of students of color has gone viral. The episode comes less than two weeks after a Columbia professor’s office was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti. In a statement posted on its website on Sunday, Columbia University administrators denounced the episode, calling it “deeply disturbing” and “racially charged” and announced it was investigating Sunday’s episode. The young man in the video, identified as Julian von Abele, a sophomore studying physics, claimed in a statement provided to The Daily Beast that the video “does not show my true beliefs.” He also stated, “I am not a white supremacist or racist, nor do I subscribe to any views that support that ideology. I unequivocally denounce all groups that support racism. My reaction that evening grew out of my distaste for the overuse of the term ‘white privilege’ and similar divisive rhetoric as a means of dismissing views of others.”
Sexual Assault and Title IX
Jacob Anderson, a former Baylor University fraternity president who was accused of rape will not serve any jail time or be forced to register as a sex offender after a judge accepted a plea deal he had been offered by Texas prosecutors. Anderson was charged with four counts of sexual assault after he was accused of raping a 19-year-old woman at a 2016 party thrown by Phi Delta Theta, the fraternity chapter of which he was president. The plea agreement between Anderson’s defense team and the district attorney’s office in McLennan County infuriated the victim. “I have been through hell and back and my life has been forever turned upside down,” the victim wrote in a letter to her attorney. “This guy violently raped me multiple times, choked me, and when I blacked out, he dumped me face down on the ground and left me to die. When I woke up aspirating up my own vomit, my friends immediately took me to the hospital.”
Sexual Health
A refreshed version of a bill which would require California public colleges and universities to provide medication abortion – sometimes known as the “abortion pill” – on campuses statewide was introduced in the state’s legislature last week. The first attempt at this legislation was ultimately defeated by Gov. Jerry Brown in September this year. Its advocates are optimistic that this version will be successful, hoping that California’s incoming governor Gavin Newsom will see the proposal through.
College Affordability
A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research examined the effects of a targeted-outreach campaign for low-income students at the University of Michigan. The campaign, known as the High Achieving Involved Leader (hail) Scholarship, encourages highly qualified, low-income students to apply to the university, promising them four years of education free of tuition and fees. Of the students who received the mailing, nearly 70 percent applied, a rate that was more than double that of the control group’s 26 percent. The percentage of low-income students enrolling at the university more than doubled as well-from 13 percent in the control group to 28 percent in the group of students who received the mailer. “Our results show a low-cost intervention can profoundly alter student application to and enrollment at highly selective colleges,” reads the paper, “Closing the Gap: The Effect of a Targeted, Tuition-Free Promise on College Choices of High-Achieving, Low-Income Students.”
In a Washington Post op-ed, William C. Dudley, the president of Washington and Lee University, explains how the university was able to rapidly increase the number of low-income students at the school. According to Dudley, the increase reflects W&L’s “commitment to enroll and support talented young people regardless of their family financial circumstances.” The university worked to make it financially possible for students from low-income families to attend, cast as wide a net as possible, partnering with community-based organizations that specialize in helping selective institutions and high-achieving, low-income students find each other, and brought low income students to campus to experience firsthand what the institution has to offer.
Stanford University is making changes in how it calculates undergraduate students’ financial aid to exclude the value of home equity, acknowledging that many families may be house rich but cash poor and see college as out of reach. The change, also taking place at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will benefit families who live in parts of the country with high home prices.
Physical Health
University of Rhode Island has joined the Tobacco-Free Generation Campus Initiative, a program aimed at eliminating all tobacco use from college and university campuses across the country. The initiative is a partnership between The American Cancer Society, the Truth Initiative, and the CVS Health Foundation. Of the program, Ellen Reynolds, director of the student health center at URI said, “Our hope is to learn how many smokers we have, between the faculty, staff and students, and to identify their willingness to look at cessation products for those that are smokers.”
A new national survey suggests that to increase flu vaccination among college students, a combination of education, increased access, and incentives would have a large impact.
Substance Use
The parents of a 19-year-old college freshman who died of head injuries in a fall suffered after a day of drinking are seeking to hold his roommate and other students liable. Lafayette College lacrosse recruit McCrae Williams died on Sept. 11, 2017, two days after he fell in his dorm room and likely hit his head on the concrete. Williams’ parents, Christopher and Dianne Williams of Weston, Massachusetts, filed a wrongful death suit against 10 students last week. The suit alleges that students failed to seek immediate medical help for Williams after finding him on the floor, instead picking him up and putting him in bed. The students didn’t call 911 until the following afternoon.
