Mental and Behavioral Health
Rebecca Alifimoff, a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, argued in an op-ed for Daily Pennsylvanian that the referral system from the schools Counseling and Psychological Services to an outside clinician is broken. According to Alifimoff, after a game of phone tag, a series of emails, and ultimately, a 20-minute conversation with a CAPS Referral Coordinator, she received “two links: one to the Aetna Health Insurance Student Health webpage and one to Aetna’s general “find a doctor” tool,” both of which can easily be found on the internet, and neither of which helped in her case.
David Rosenberg, Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Wayne State University examines why mental health disorders like anxiety and depression are increasing in college students. He hypothesizes that the factors of social media and technology, non-prescription use of stimulants, and financial stressors are all playing a role.
The University of Kansas Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies, along with the Latinx Studies Initiative, will host a mental health symposium this month to support students – particularly minorities and those affected by recent U.S. policy changes on immigration. According to Marta Caminero-Santangelo, CLACS, “Many students on campus are directly affected by the very real possibilities of deportation, family separation or losing DACA status. Students of color on campus also continue to be impacted by racist rhetoric as well as microaggressions that suggest they don’t belong.”
Hank Azaria, an Emmy-winning actor, and Joe Schrank, founder of TheFix.com, a website dedicated to disseminating news about addiction and recovery, participated in a panel discussion about mental health and addiction at Tufts University. Health and Wellness Dean of Student Affairs Mary Pat McMahon moderated the conversation, a significant part of which focused on the intersection of mental health problems and substance abuse. Azaria described the role of substances in shaping his college experience at Tufts, saying “College, to me, was a place where everyone was a temporary alcoholic. It’s the culture. I went in and out of struggling with it. One thing I learned in life is that there’s no shame in asking for help.” Azaria stressed the importance of seeking out a supportive community to deal with mental health issues or addiction recovery, and the importance of destigmatizing mental health.
University of California Davis Chancellor Gary May announced that he has established three task forces of students, faculty and staff to examine affordable student housing, food security and mental health care. Each task force has been asked to review existing programs and options, consider improvements and make recommendations. In his announcement, May said, “These are issues that have tremendous impact on our community. UC Davis has a great many services and resources available to our students, but it’s not a static landscape.
Yale University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Graduate Student Assembly has designed and proposed the Mental Health Focus Group Project to explore mental health and wellness issues among graduate students, identify key areas of poor mental health and wellness in each division, and develop strategies for improvement. Combining information gleaned from surveys and focus groups, the projects committee will create a report outlining its findings and recommendations for the University, to be disseminated in the fall.
Diversity and Inclusion
Last week, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan offered a coalition of the state’s historically black colleges and universities up to $100 million to resolve a 12-year-old lawsuit over inequality in public higher education. The lawsuit accused Maryland of insufficiently funding HBCUS and allowing other state schools to duplicate their programs, placing pressure on enrollment.
Matthew Heimbach, of the white national group Traditionalist Worker Party, plans to hold a talk Feb. 17 at the University of Tennessee. The group’s website includes an announcement about planning a “march to retake our college campuses,” and invites white nationalists and Traditionalist Worker Party members to attend and to be nonviolent. The Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group that tracks extremists, calls the Traditionalist Worker Party , “a white nationalist group that advocates for racially pure nations and communities and blames Jews for many of the world’s problems.”
Daniel R. Porterfield, president of Franklin & Marshall College, will leave higher education this year to become president of the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit policy group. During Porterfield’s tenure, the institution’s enrollment and profile has risen, in part due to increasing financial aid to high-achieving low-income applicants, and tripling the percentage of Pell Grant-eligible students enrolled to around 20 percent. The Chronicle of Higher Education interviews Porterfield about how to find talented students, how to gauge their potential, and what keeps him up at night. He said, “The key is to approach the work from the starting point of talent, and to understand what qualities of talent will be predictive of academic and all-around success… We’re looking for curious students. Students who are going to make their college experience count. Students who know how to work hard. Students who have the resilience to deal with day-to-day challenges and aren’t going to be radically thrown off stride by a challenging course.”
Lawrence Rosen, a Princeton University professor has canceled his course on hate speech, blasphemy, and pornography after several students walked out of a class discussion during which he used a racial slur three times. The lecture, for the course “Cultural Freedoms” was about oppressive symbolism and sparked confrontations with students who expressed discomfort with his use of the word, according to the student newspaper, The Princetonian. “There were about six black students in the lecture,” one student told the newspaper. “All the black students were looking at each other, as if asking whether he actually said that.”
According to an analysis by The Century Foundation, about three-quarters of U.S. News & World Report’s top 100 universities give a boost in admissions to “legacy admissions”, or relatives of alumni. Last week, student groups at 13 elite colleges, including Cornell First Generation Students Union, Socioeconomic Diversity Advocates at the University Chicago, and First-Gens@Brown announced that they are mobilizing against such policies, which research finds tend to benefit wealthy, white applicants.
This week, the U.S. Education Department announced that it won’t hear complaints about or take action regarding transgender bathroom rights (the ability to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity). Complaints about harassing, bullying or punishing transgender or gender nonconforming students fall under sex discrimination prohibited by Title IX. But department spokeswoman Liz Hill said that, “In the case of bathrooms, however, long-standing regulations provide that separating facilities on the basis of sex is not a form of discrimination prohibited by Title IX.”
Sexual Health and Contraception
The California Senate recently passed a bill that would require the state’s public universities to offer the abortion pill. If the bill passes the State Assembly and gains Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown’s approval, medication abortion would be accessible to college students within four years. University of Maryland student Asha Kodan is arguing in the Diamondback, the student newspaper, that it is in the best interest to the student body for UMD to follow California’s lead by also attempting to pass this bill.
Free Speech
In late January, a live-streamed video showed University of Nebraska student Daniel Kleve, and five other men discuss the future of white nationalism in America. Campus groups held protests and demanded he be expelled for his comments about his love of violence. Last week, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln’s chancellor, Ronnie D. Green, said that Kleve, who has called himself “the most active white nationalist in the Nebraska area” would not be expelled, citing his First Amendment protections.
Substance Use
The Chronicle observes the drinking culture in the college town surrounding University of Georgia from six different perspectives: the police officer, the fake ID producer, the bar owner, the educator, the party planner, and the tailgater.
Hunger
A 2017 study conducted by the Hope Lab at the University of Wisconsin found that two in three students are food insecure, lacking reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo addressed food inadequacies in January in his State of the State address, describing his hope that all SUNY and CUNY schools will provide a physical food pantry or enable students to receive food through another arrangement, and proposing a $1 million state investment to help schools implement the programs. Currently, only half of SUNY and CUNY schools have access to food pantries. Cuomo believes that New York would be the first state to require every public campus to have a food pantry.
Policy
The Trump administration is seeking to slash nearly $4 billion in annual funding for student aid programs; these plans include ending loan forgiveness for public servants, changing the terms of income-driven student loan repayment and terminating the payment of the interest on low-income students’ loans while they are in school. Those three changes alone could increase the cost of higher education for borrowers by more than $200 billion over the next decade. In a statement, Senator Patty Murray of Washington and ranking Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said, “At a time when millions of students are struggling under the crushing burden of student debt, it speaks volumes that President Trump and Secretary DeVos are proposing $200 billion in cuts to financial aid.”
College Affordability
According to a new report by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, almost a third of students who took out loans to pay for their education left school before completing their degree.
