Mental and Behavioral Health
The U.S. Justice Department settled a lawsuit with the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, over a student’s complaint that she was placed on mandatory medical leave against her will for a mental health condition. The settlement requires the university to include individual mental health assessments of students before placing them on mandatory medical leave; it also encourages officials to seek solutions for students with mental health conditions that will allow them to continue with their academic programs.
On Monday, Governor Chris Christie signed a suicide prevention bill into law, inspired by the tragic death of a New Jersey track star and Ivy League college student who took her own life in 2014. The measure requires New Jersey colleges to make a mental health professionals available around the clock to counsel college students.
On Reddit, an online discussion forum, the subreddit community SuicideWatch serves as a safe space for people with suicidal thoughts. The page allows users to find support from one another while barring any posts about methods of suicide.
A new study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration found that young people ages 18-25 who were not in college were more likely to attempt suicide with a plan more often ending in death. “We don’t want to ignore the problems of college students,” study co-author Richard McKeon, branch chief for suicide prevention at SAMHSA, told VICE. “The important thing is that people don’t think that college students are actually at greater risk [than their non-student peers] when the opposite is true.”
Diversity and Inclusion
On Monday, New York University announced that it has begun dismissing the checkbox questions about criminal and disciplinary history as a consideration on the Common Application. The move continues a growing trend to lower barriers to higher education for people with criminal histories.
Last month, in the wake of the shooting of police officers at a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, University of Houston Student Government Vice President Rohini Sethi wrote on Facebook “Forget #BlackLivesMatter. More like AllLivesMatter.” This week, student body President Shane Smith complied with student leaders request to suspend Rohini. Of the decision, Smith said, “Her post and subsequent actions were very divisive. It caused some in our student body to become very upset with her. They lost faith in her ability to represent them because they felt that she did not understand or respect the struggles in their lives.”
Harvard’s exclusive, single-gender “Final Clubs” have long been the center of controversy for being symbols of privilege and discrimination on an increasingly diverse campus. This year, the Dean of Harvard College, Rakesh Khurana took a firm stance against the clubs. In a letter to the University President, Khurana wrote, “The discriminatory membership policies of these organizations have led to the perpetuation of spaces that are rife with power imbalances… The most entrenched of these spaces send an unambiguous message that they are the exclusive preserves of men. In their recruitment practices and through their extensive resources and access to networks of power, these organizations propagate exclusionary values that undermine those of the larger Harvard College community.”
How to integrate diversity into curricula is the subject of an Atlantic article on the increase of controversial diversity requirements at US colleges and universities.
Title IX and Sexual Assault
After two trials and four years, a judge sentenced Lang Her to one year in jail as well as five years’ probation in the sexual assault of fellow UC Davis student Yee Xiong. Her is also required to register as a sex offender.
A transgender high school students in Wisconsin is suing his school district for discrimination after they announced a plan to give all transgendered students green wristbands.
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the Education Department has 260 open Title IX investigations at colleges and universities across the country. With an uncertain political climate, and legal challenges to the OCR’s authority, the future of the federal crackdown on campus sexual assault is uncertain.
Jessica Luther, author of a new book, Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape, spoke to the Chronicle about the systematic ways rape culture is perpetuated in college football, and what can be done to alleviate the problem on campus.
