Mental Health
Colleges across the country are expanding mental health services in response to increased demand. In many cases, students are not only requesting these changes, they are petitioning and raising money for them as well.
Educators across the country express concern in the wake of the murder-suicide of UCLA professor William Klug, citing a need to be vigilant about mental health warning signs. Maria A. Dixon a professor at Southern Methodist University, remarked, “As professors, we must remain concerned with the whole being of our students — not just their class performance but their reactions to grades, critique and pressure… More campus resources for responding to mental health needs and concerns of students and staff displaying warning signs could engage the campus community in a solution.”
Diversity and Inclusion
Faculty at Pomona College in California have adopted a new set of guidelines for tenure — one that includes reviewing a faculty member’s commitment to diversity and inclusion on campus. Faculty members will now be assessed on being “attentive to diversity in the student body” and promoting “an inclusive classroom where all students are encouraged to participate.”
North Carolina Central University professor Kathryn Wymer speaks out on the importance of supporting LGBTQI students, writing, “When we amplify their voices, helping them be heard by speaking up for them in class, in faculty meetings, and even perhaps online or in the media, it helps further the goals of inclusivity and acceptance.”
Hunger and Homelessness or Physical Health
University of Florida opened the Field and Fork Pantry to address hunger and food insecurity among their students, one tenth of whom report having gone hungry. Senior vice president of agriculture and natural resources Jack Payne said, “The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and the Dean of Students Office has recast the starving student cliché as a serious policy issue: hunger as a barrier to higher education.”
Sexual Assault
Former Stanford University student Brock Turner was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman outside a fraternity party. At his sentencing, his victim read a powerful letter describing the severe impact the assault has had on her, which she later provided to Buzzfeed.
Turner submitted a letter to the judge prior to his sentencing, in which he maintained that the victim had consented to the encounter, and cited a college environment of peer pressure, drinking and promiscuity.
The six month sentence handed down by the presiding Judge Persky was met with outrage. Of the sentencing, California assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman said “Judge Persky’s decision is baffling and repugnant, especially given the rapist’s refusal to accept his guilt, and to instead blame ‘drinking culture.”
Chronicle suggests the case may influence the way colleges and universities deal with sexual assault cases in the future.
In emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, lawyers for the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights have expressed frustration with University of Michigan for repeatedly stalling the investigation into into the institution’s handling of sexual-assault complaints filed under Title IX.
While in Puerto Rico for a two-month research project with Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a WPI student was raped by a security guard at her university-leased apartment building. WPI is now involved in a civil suit with the victim, who alleges the college failed to provide a safe environment at the building, where she was required to live. The school’s attorneys are arguing that because the victim engaged in risky behavior, including excessive drinking, on the night of the assault, she is partly responsible for the crime.
New federal data shows that Brown University and University of Connecticut have the highest rates of campus rape reports. Victim advocates say this reflects a positive trend: a growing number of students who have been sexually assaulted are coming forward and reporting the incidents.
Gun Violence
In the wake of the UCLA murder-suicide, students on campus claim they were unprepared and uneducated on how to react in an active shooter situations, saying they had received no training from the university.
The Chronicle of Higher Education conducted a survey of its readers to learn about fears of mass shootings on campus.
