“It’s a lot about recognizing the reality of our mental health challenges right now and to acknowledge that we’re listening to students,” she said.
Landphair expects the app to launch on campus in mid-September and is curious to see how it’s used. The panel suggested, among other things, revising the crisis response protocol to make a mental health professional the primary responder and making counselors available 24-7 to students, which could reduce the need to call campus police. Paino, president of the University of Mary Washington, responded to the demands on his campus by forming a community advisory panel to review the downtown protest and recommend reforms. In a 2021 campus safety plan drafted in response to student and faculty calls for reform, the University of California system recommended that each campus create a multidisciplinary crisis team to respond to behavioral health crises, among other tasks. Johns Hopkins University paused a plan to create its own police force, though that has recently resumed. Some university leaders, including University of Minnesota president Joan Gabel, responded by cutting ties with local police departments. They weren’t alone in making such demands students at other campuses across the country have voiced similar sentiments. Some student activists called for the university to defund the campus police department.
Fredericksburg police used tear gas to disperse the downtown crowd, where the presence of campus police angered students, alumni and community members. The mental health working group was formed following a lengthy review of the campus police force, which was prompted by the department’s decision to help local Fredericksburg police manage off-campus protests related to Floyd’s murder. “Mental health concerns have now become one of the top few priorities for institutions in a way that you just didn’t see-I think student affairs professionals would say it was 15 years ago, but not presidents, and now presidents are saying it,” said Juliette Landphair, vice president of student affairs at Mary Washington, who chaired a working group last summer on the university’s response to mental health crises, which led to the after-hours counseling support and other changes. The sudden shift to remote education triggered by the pandemic also revealed deep social and financial inequities among students and exacerbated existing concerns about student mental health. Students across the country have called on university administrators to substantially defund or abolish campus police departments, citing concerns about aggressive policing and racial profiling, as well as the mishandling of students experiencing mental health crises. Why did Allegheny cut its Chinese program?īoth events had deep repercussions on college campuses that continue to play out today.These shifts on college campuses come as demand for mental health care continues to soar among students feeling emotionally battered by the police killing of George Floyd-and the wave of angry national protests that followed-and the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. At the University of Mary Washington, in Virginia, students will have access to counseling support after business hours to reduce the decision-making role of police during such crises. At the University of Florida, a mental health professional now accompanies campus police officers when they respond to calls about a student in crisis. Other universities, including Oregon State University and several University of California campuses, are also developing mobile response teams that are attached to campus police departments but led by trained therapists. Increasingly aware of the toll the past two years of political and pandemic-related upheaval have taken on student mental health, college administrators are seeking to provide better support by establishing crisis response teams and adding trained counselors to campus police departments.Ĭalifornia State University, Long Beach, recently created a mobile crisis unit staffed with mental health counselors instead of police to respond to student mental health crises.
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