Mental and Behavioral Health
In an op-ed for the University of Southern California’s student paper, The Daily Trojan, Maverick Freelander points to social media as a primary reason for increasing depression in young adults.
Diversity and Inclusion
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill denied a request by white nationalist Richard Spencer to speak on campus. UNC is the latest public university to deny Spencer’s request to speak on campus following the violence at the University of Virginia. The schools have said they are committed to free speech but are worried about the threat to campus safety.
A new study published in the journal Race and Social Problems found a positive correlation between using microaggressions and having racist attitudes. The study defined microaggressions as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory or negative racial slights and insults to the target person or group.”
The Collegian, Penn State’s student newspaper, profiles Fanta Condé, this year’s president of the Penn State Muslim Students’ Association. “There has been this established archetype of what a Muslim is, and we don’t all fit that mold,” she told the student paper. “We have people from all over the world.”
Syracuse University’s LGBT Resource Center is asking students for proposed name changes to the center in order to reflect a more expansive definition of gender and sexual identity. Tiffany Gray, the center’s director, told the Daily Orange that the name change is meant to “better align with our vision, our values, and the spectrum of communities.”
Sexual Assault and Title IX
LaPrise Harris-Williams, a former Baylor University acrobatics coach, intends to file a Title IX lawsuit against the school next week after hearing from 40 women about a culture of sexual violence at the school. According to Harris-Williams, at least a dozen told her about personal experiences of sexual assault. Harris Williams’ case will be the 10th filed against the school since the scandal that surfaced last year over how officials at the school have responded to sexual assault allegations.
Hunger and Homelessness
According to the Los Angeles Community College District, one in five students are homeless, and nearly two-thirds can’t afford nutritious meals. These numbers reflect a growing problem nationwide, where as many as 57,000 student are predicted to be homeless. In Massachusetts, a survey showed that nearly half of that state’s college campuses had an increase in homeless students last year.
Crisis Text Line, a free service that gives students an all-hours, anonymous counseling service for mental health emergencies, reports that for California Community College students who use the service, homelessness is four times more likely to be a topic of conversation than all other communications the services received. Finances were nearly three times more likely to be the topic of conversation.
Substance Abuse
In an interview with NBC News, Dr. Joseph Lee, medical director for the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation Youth Continuum, wonders if college administrators are paying enough attention to how the opioid crisis is impacting their campuses. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the overdose rate among teens has doubled between 1999 and 2015. Although college campuses haven’t seen many deaths, Lee says this is because the highest risk students either don’t make it to campus or drop out.
Baylor University opened the Beauchamp Addiction Recovery Center, which offers resources for students who are in the beginning stages of identifying an addiction or continuing their recovery. “We’re helping with retention from the perspective of caring about the whole person. We’re a Christian university and we want that to be across the board. We pay attention not just to people’s minds and bodies but their souls,” said education and outreach coordinator Chris Gibson.
Economic Opportunity
In a new paper published this summer, five economists call into question higher education’s role in promoting upward mobility, assigning “mobility report cards” for each college in the U.S. The researchers studied 30 million students between 1999 and 2014, comparing their parents’ incomes to their post-graduation earnings. They found that America’s top universities are largely closed to the low-income students, and that the best schools for helping students from poor families are accepting fewer and fewer of them.
Physical Health
In a two-part series, Syracuse’s student paper, the Daily Orange, provides a guide to a healthy freshman year. The first part focused on mental health, while this week’s second half focused on physical health, from making healthy food choices to practicing safe sex.
Greek Life
On Friday, a judge dismissed charges of involuntary manslaughter and aggravated assault against eight Pennsylvania State University fraternity members in the death of Timothy Piazza, which occurred at a fraternity initiation event. The students still face other charges related to his death.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, problems associated with initiation and hazing have perpetuated, despite efforts by schools to rein in fraternities. Some schools are asserting greater control over Greek life, requiring students to attend educational workshops, while others are encouraging them to develop their own solutions or face sanctions. So far, real change has been slow, but administrators believe bringing these issues into the open has helped remove the layer of secrecy that has traditionally permeated the institutions.
In 2005, all fraternity chapters at the University of Colorado joined the Undergraduate Interfraternity Council, a student-run group that has been successful in transforming Greek life at CU Boulder. The Council sets expectations through by-laws, works with local law enforcement, requires that all fraternity chapters remain closed on traditionally troublesome holidays and events, and runs educational programs on hazing, drugs, alcohol abuse, and sexual harassment and assault.