Mental and Behavioral Health
Colleges and universities across the country are participating in the Healthy Minds Study and the JED campus program, an initiative designed to empower schools to promote the emotional well-being of students. The Healthy Minds Study, a yearly online survey ,is partnering with JED Campus to evaluate emotional health and prevent suicide among teens. At the University of Washington, the study found “Eighty percent of students reported that over the last four weeks that had some level of impairment in their academic functioning because of mental health or emotional difficulties,” according to Dr. Natacha Foo Kune, director of the UW Counseling Center and co-chair of the JED campus program for UW Seattle. Emerson College will administer the survey this year, after applying to the program in December 2016.
Gabriela Thorne, a student at Harvard University wrote in an op-ed in The Nation that college students of color experience additional stressors beyond that of their white peers. She says that grappling with issues like time management and homesickness becomes much more difficult when layered on top of the daily realities of being black in America. Thorne argues that as conversations about mental health become increasingly common on college campuses, administrations must address the mental health imbalance for students of color.
As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, Jared Fentonof founded the Reflect Organization, which helps college students manage their mental health and wellness. The nonprofit is now represented at six universities and growing. Reflect students meet on campus every month, split up into small groups led by trained student facilitators, and discuss what’s going on in their lives as a way to deal with what Fentonof calls today’s stressful and sometimes overwhelming environment.
The Ohio State University Student Wellness Center is working to promote healthy body image through its student-facilitated Body Project workshops. The project is part of a national body image program aiming to challenge society’s “thin ideal”.
A mental health task force at Johns Hopkins University released its final report detailing recommendations for improving the school’s climate of mental health and well-being. The report outlines three major recommendations for the university: Promote a climate of awareness and support for student mental health, wellness, and stress reduction; Take the necessary steps to improve care at JHU mental health services, supporting greater access to mental health services; And offer, and in some cases require, training on mental health awareness and resources for faculty, staff, and students.
Northwestern University Associated Student Government hosted the Improve NU Challenge, a pitch competition for prize money and residency in startup incubator The Garage. The winner was The Ad Meliora Initiative (AMI) which plans to create resilience programming to improve students’ mental health. AMI, which will also receive $7,000 from Student Affairs to implement the idea, has partnered with the Health Promotion and Wellness office.
Last year, the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center introduced an initiative called “The Penn Program for Flourishing,” which aimed to provide students with “a toolkit for thriving in school and life.” The eight-week program, which was not a formalized course, was open to all undergraduates. David Yaden, a Ph.D. student and research fellow at Penn’s Positive Psychology Center said that instituting a larger course would be valuable for Penn. According to Yaden, “As students become more and more scientifically literate they want to know what the research has to say.”
A new study published in The Journal of College Student Psychotherapy showed light therapy to be effective in improving depression scores and sleeping behaviors in a sample of 79 college students. The study also found that students who received light therapy had less somatic aches and pains, concentration difficulties, and appetite problems.
Diversity and Inclusion
Last week, a dining hall at New York University advertised a special meal in honor of Black History Month which featured barbecue ribs, cornbread, collard greens, and kool-aid and watermelon-flavored water. Nia Harris, a sophomore in N.Y.U.’s College of Arts & Science, voiced her offense to the head cook who dismissed her objections, which Harris then detailed in an email to school officials. Ms. Harris then posted a screenshot of her email on social media, along with the text, “This is what it’s like to be a black student at New York University.” The post went viral and within a day, NYU President Andrew Hamilton released a statement calling the menu “inexcusably insensitive” and that the “error was compounded by the insensitivity of the replies” to Ms. Harris’s questions.
Jorge Reyes Salinas is a student trustee for the California State University system where he is pursuing a master’s in communication studies. He is also a DACA recipient. As president of the student body of the Northridge campus and vice president of the California State Student Association, Salinas helped win support for a center for undocumented students, a food pantry and better transportation options for a broader group of at-risk students. Now he feels an added urgency to prove to policymakers that DACA students are worth protecting. In an interview with The Chronicle, Salinas discussed his priorities as a trustee, as well as his worries and hopes as a Dreamer.
The Bruin Republicans, a conservative group at the University of California Los Angeles, recently invited controversial far-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on campus but then promptly rescinded the offer. WBUR talked with CLA student Mariela Muro, a member of the group and a young Mexican-American, about why they took back the invitation. Ms. Muro stressed in an article that the mission of the Bruin Republicans is to promote conservative ideas in the public square and that hosting Yiannopoulos would undermine that mission.
A panel discussion held last week by a Jewish student group at the University of Virginia was disrupted by protesters including students and non-students chanting anti-Israel slogans and holding up signs. The Brody Center said it invited the protesters to take part in a discussion, but that “(they) refused to engage in conversation and instead continued to shout intimidating and hostile slurs directed at students, staff, and panelists.” Coming shortly after last summer’s alt-right march through campus, the dean of students emailed the student body saying the incident “runs counter to our important shared values of respect and intellectual inquiry, and should be firmly rejected.”
Student Success
At almost every college across the country, some fraction of committed incoming freshman students who do not show up for school in the fall — a phenomenon admissions officials call “summer melt”. The reasons for melt aren’t always clear, but low-income students are particularly affected; around 20 percent of low-income students who were set to attend a four-year college do not actually enroll anywhere. Research suggests that the many of the administrative tasks that students must complete during the summer play a role in summer melt. According to the Chronicle, experts believe that administrators can help students in confronting challenges, academic and otherwise, that bar them from coming to campus as planned.
Sexual Health and Contraception
The New York Times profiles Antioch College, a small, progressive school in southwest Ohio that in 1990 pioneered its affirmative sexual consent policy, formulating a document now called the Sexual Offense Prevention Policy. At the time, it was mocked by many outside the school. Since then, education about consent has become a part of campus life at colleges across the country and a significant factor in combating sexual violence.
Marandah Rain Field-Elliot, a student at the University of California at Berkeley, explains in Teen Vogue how she’s working to make the abortion pill available on college campuses in California.
Despite the fact that 94% of Boston College students who voted in a recent referendum sided with the student group advocating for the distribution of contraceptives on campus, the school’s position on the issue remains unchanged. In an email, University Spokesman Jack Dunn said, “As with Notre Dame, Georgetown, Holy Cross and most Catholic colleges and universities, Boston College does not permit the public distribution of condoms on campus. We take this position out of respect for our commitments as a Jesuit, Catholic university, and we ask our students to be respectful of these commitments and the code of conduct that governs all BC students.”
Physical Health
Ithaca College student Tra Nguyen is drafting a proposal for a 100% tobacco-free campus policy. The move follows the City College of San Francisco which voted last week to advance an on-campus smoking ban. According to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation there are at least 2,106 smoke-free campuses in the U.S.
Sleep
Increasingly, colleges are offering students classes on improving the amount and quality of sleep. Arizona State University just joined the ranks of Brown University, University of Missouri, Stanford and New York University in offering a class that covers everything from the science behind sleep, to dream analysis.
Wellness
The Brown University Institutional Master Plan proposes the construction of a “wellness dorm” that will provide a “more integrated approach to health and wellness.” Health Services and Counseling and Psychological Services will physically move to the residential hall. A date has not yet been set for the University to begin construction on the new facilities, but a preliminary plan has been lain out.
College Affordability
Federal student loan debt has reached nearly $1.4 trillion, more than twice it was ten years ago. Susan Dynarskii, professor of public policy, education and economics at the University of Michigan, spoke with WBUR about whether the situation constitutes a crisis.
