Mental Health
34th Street Magazine, the arts and culture magazine of the Daily Pennsylvanian, explains why some University of Pennsylvania students prefer therapists outside of the school’s Counseling And Psychiatric Services (CAPS) office.
This week’s cover story of the Daily Barometer, Oregon State University’s weekly student newspaper, talks about “breaking the silence” around mental health.
Yareliz Mendez-Zamora, a recent University of Florida graduate, writes from personal experience about the importance of starting an open, honest conversation about mental health in the Latinx community. “The Latinx community swallows the secret of mental health, and leaves it in its mouth to rot,” she writes.
Diversity and Inclusion
The FBI is assisting campus police at the University of Maryland in determining whether or not this month’s fatal stabbing of a black student on campus is considered a hate crime. Sean Urbanski, a University of Maryland student, stabbed Bowie State University student Richard W. Collins III to death, and has been charged with assault and first- and second-degree murder. It was later found that Mr. Urbanski belonged to a Facebook group called “Alt-Reich: Nation.” The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the limited means that campus administrators have to respond to students who espouse extremist views; many approach these challenges the same way they would a student acting erratically or threatening to harm themselves.
In an op-ed in the New York Times, Dylan Lewis, a 2017 graduate of the University of Mississippi, tells of coming out as gay in the rural south. Lewis, whose parents threw him out, found acceptance at the University of Mississippi, but still faces steep obstacles financing his education without any financial help from his family.
The University of Missouri named a new chancellor to lead its flagship campus. Alexander Cartwright, State University of New York Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor will take office in August, a year and a half after “Mizzou” was rocked by student protests that led to the resignations of the chancellor and the system president.
Students at the University of Oregon hope to form chapters of Epsilon Sigma Rho fraternity and Kappa Delta Chi sorority. The multicultural organizations will be firsts for Greek Life at the predominantly white campus. The founders are also bearing socioeconomic diversity in mind, planning to keep the cost of rush and membership affordable.
The Harvard Crimson reports on the experience of being a Muslim student at the Ivy League school during the Trump presidency. “There is an additional tax placed on Muslim students to not only have to navigate the regular experience of being a student, but on top of that, you also have to figure out how you can advocate for your community,” Kennedy School student Omar El-Halwagi said.
In an op-ed for the Iowa State Daily, Julissa Garcia writes about how her race influences how others perceive her. “I am judged too quickly of stereotypes, not judged enough to be taken seriously,” she writes. “Limited by what others think, then what I have to say.”
Washington State University is building a gender-neutral locker room in its student rec center. It is expected to be completed by the time students return for the fall semester.
Free Speech
More than five dozen Middlebury College students have been disciplined for their roles in disrupting a speech by the conservative author Charles Murray earlier this year. Student protesters shouted over Murray’s speech, causing it to be moved to a different room, at which time the protesters set off fire alarms in the hallways. When Murray left the building with his faculty interviewer, Allison Stanger, they were shoved and pushed by several masked protesters. Stanger suffered a concussion in the incident. Most students involved received probation.
Students for Life at California State University at San Marcos are suing the school for denying funding for an anti-abortion speaker to come to campus. They claim that the public university has previously hosted speakers who favor abortion rights.
An estimated 150 students walked out of the University of Notre Dame commencement to protest Vice President Pence’s receipt of an honorary degree. In a Chronicle op-ed, Jacob T. Levy, a professor of political science at McGill University said the walk-out was a reasonable and appropriate reaction, and “isn’t even slightly an impingement on the university’s norms of free and open inquiry.”
Sexual Assault and Title IX
Blake Wentworth, a former assistant professor in UC Berkeley’s South and Southeast Asian Studies department, was dismissed after he was found to to have sexually harassed four students. “The Committee found by clear and convincing evidence that Wentworth had engaged in the misconduct and recommended his dismissal,” a campus press release read. “These actions are part of the University’s continuing effort to eradicate sexual misconduct from our campus.”
New York Magazine covers how the sexual assault scandal at Baylor University impacted four women on the campus: a senior, who stopped going to football games; a law school student, who became worried about her classrooms’ proximity to the football stadium; a recent graduate, who is ashamed of her alma mater; and a professor, who avoids naming the school where she works at conferences.
Disability
In response to a Chronicle story titled “Why I Dread the Accommodations Talk,” three associate professors of disability write that labeling disability conversations as something to “dread” is dangerous for the students and faculty members alike. The essay, they write, perpetuates many false myths, including seeing students with disabilities as not “resilient.” “We need to adjust our classroom environments away from ableist structures and shuck our own ableist baggage so that when we encounter disability in our classrooms, we are filled with possibility, not dread,” they write.
Physical Health
Drexel University’s Weight, Eating and Lifestyle Science Center will open on July 1. The WELL Center will provide services for obesity and eating disorders and will be home to research projects about disordered eating.
