Mental and Behavioral Health
In the University of Maryland student newspaper, The Diamondback, senior Mitchell Rock calls for ending the stigma against seeking help for mental illness while on campus, adding another voice to the growing movement among students and campus counselors to seek help if you’re struggling.
More than two years after the suicide of former University of Pennsylvania junior Timothy Hamlett, his mother is suing the school as well as her son’s former track and field coach, Robin Martin, for negligence and wrongful death. The suit alleges that Martin deliberately failed to inform Hamlett’s parents or other Penn administrators that he had previously attempted suicide.
A recent large-scale survey shows more than 60 percent of students, faculty and staff members don’t feel adequately prepared to approach college students who may be at risk of mental illness, and that more than half don’t feel prepared to recognize when a student is exhibiting signs of psychological distress.
As students head back to school, WBUR compiles a list of mental health resources they can access beyond just the campus counseling center.
Diversity and Inclusion
As universities across the country attempt to reckon with their ties to slavery, the University of Mississippi recently announced several changes that alter how the school memorializes southern, historical figures. The school will rename Vardaman Hall, named for Gov. James K. Vardaman, who openly advocated lynching. A plaque will be added to Lamar Hall to provide historical context to its namesake, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, who drafted the state’s orders of secession, funded his own Confederate regiment, and held 31 slaves. The changes were based on the recommendations of a committee that included faculty and alumni.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, this fall, women will comprise more than 56 percent of students on campuses nationwide, and the trend shows no sign of abating. The department estimates that by 2026, 57 percent of college students will be women. Some colleges are working hard to return to a more equitable gender mix, fearing that young men, especially young men of color and from disadvantaged backgrounds, are falling behind.
According to a new report by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, nearly 1 in 4 high-achieving, low-income students apply to college on their own, with little to no support. The report examines the barriers these students face, including the cost of applying and visiting schools, financial aid transparency, and lack of guidance through the process. In an interview with NPR, the report’s author, Jennifer Glynn, acknowledged that high schools and counselors play a role, but suggests that colleges can do more to understand the context of where a student comes from, and encourage more low-income students to apply.
In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, several universities cancelled or rejected nationalist rallies and events on their campuses. Texas A&M University cancelled a “White Lives Matter” event scheduled to be held Sept. 11, citing safety concerns, and the University of Florida denied a request to rent space on its campus for an event that was expected to bring white nationalist leader Richard Spencer to the school.
Incoming students at Dartmouth College, Columbia University, Williams College, and Vassar College wrote open letters of support to students at the University of Virginia, rejecting the messages of hatred and violence they saw portrayed during the white nationalist demonstrations in Charlottesville.
Hazing
In the case of the hazing death of Penn State student Timothy Piazza, defense attorneys have asked a Pennsylvania judge to enforce a subpoena against Tim Bream, the Beta Theta Pi resident advisor. The defense team would like to question Bream about his actions during the hours between when Piazza drank toxic amounts of alcohol and fell headfirst down the fraternity stairs, and when the police were finally called the next morning. Penn State is also hiring eight new Student Affairs positions to monitor Greek Life and is bringing student conduct cases from the Greek system under university purview.
Academic Achievement/Retention
According to two recently released surveys, half of the nation’s high school students feel academically unprepared for college, and half of the students entering postsecondary education are anxious that they may not graduate.
At some schools, as many as 40 percent of students who submitted a tuition deposit in the spring do not show up for classes in the fall. The phenomenon, knowns as “summer melt,” costs individual colleges and universities hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue annually. The Wall Street Journal reports that universities are ramping up efforts to combat the problem with aggressive outreach to students, via text messages, and phone calls, that keep students excited about school throughout the summer, and help them with problems that may discourage them from attending in the fall.
Guns on Campus
Former University of Kansas associate professor Jacob Dorman resigned over the school’s campus carry policy, which took effect this summer. Other faculty report feeling uneasy about the school’s new gun policy. “Kansas will never secure the future that it deserves if it weakens its institutions of higher learning by driving off faculty members or applicants who feel as I do that there is no place for firearms in classrooms,” he wrote in his resignation letter, which was published in the Lawrence Journal World. “Kansas can have great universities, or it can have concealed carry in classrooms, but it cannot have both.”
College Affordability
Steven Klinsky, founder and chief executive of New Mountain Capital has launched “Freshman Year for Free,” a program that lets students earn a full year’s worth of college credits free of charge. The philanthropist is covering the cost of the creation of 40 online courses designed and taught by professors from accredited universities. To earn college credit, students must first pass the Advanced Placement or College Level Examination Program exams.
Free Speech
Nicholas Dirks, the former Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, argues in the Washington Post that while concern about the vitality of free speech and political discourse on college campuses has a legitimate cause, much of the debate is “part of a broader assault on the idea of the university itself: on its social functions, on the fundamental importance of advanced knowledge and enlightened debate, on the critical role of science and expertise in public policy and on the significance of intellectuals and serious thought leaders more generally.”
In an op-ed in the New York Times, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an assistant professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, argues that despite the right-wing media’s obsession with the stifling of “free speech” on college campuses, conservative pundits only want to protect free speech that aligns with their view. She refers to their reaction of outrage when progressives express their right to free speech.
Health and Wellness
In a recent Boston University study that examined the brains of 202 deceased football players, researchers found CTE — chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative disease thought to be caused by brain trauma — in 87 percent of them. Even the brains of young adults who had only played high-school football showed mild cases of CTE, that in many incidences, led to pronounced changes in behavior, mood, and cognitive function: hopelessness, impulsivity, memory loss, and substance abuse.
In the Daily Bruin, Ankita Nair, a student at UCLA, argues that new student orientation should include presentations on the importance of sleep, and that the omission puts students at risk of developing diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and even early mortality if they continue to stay up late into the night.
