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Showing posts with label colleges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colleges. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

‘What if Yale finds out?’

William Wan
The Washington Post
Originally posted November 11, 2022

Suicidal students are pressured to withdraw from Yale, then have to apply to get back into the university

Here are two excerpt:

‘Getting rid of me’

Five years before the pandemic derailed so many college students’ lives, a 20-year-old math major named Luchang Wang posted this message on Facebook:

“Dear Yale, I loved being here. I only wish I could’ve had some time. I needed time to work things out and to wait for new medication to kick in, but I couldn’t do it in school, and I couldn’t bear the thought of having to leave for a full year, or of leaving and never being readmitted. Love, Luchang.”

Wang had withdrawn from Yale once before and feared that under Yale’s policies, a second readmission could be denied.
Instead, she flew to San Francisco, and, according to authorities, climbed over the railing at the Golden Gate Bridge and jumped to her death.

Her 2015 suicide sparked demands for change at Yale. Administrators convened a committee to evaluate readmission policies, but critics said the reforms they adopted were minor.

They renamed the process “reinstatement” instead of “readmission,” eliminated a $50 reapplication fee and gave students a few more days at the beginning of each semester to take a leave of absence without having to reapply.

Students who withdrew still needed to write an essay, secure letters of recommendation, interview with Yale officials and prove their academic worth by taking two courses at another four-year university. Those who left for mental health reasons also had to demonstrate to Yale that they’d addressed their problems.

In April — nearly 10 months after S. had been pressured to withdraw — Yale officials announced another round of changes to the reinstatement process. 

They eliminated the requirement that students pass two courses at another university and got rid of a mandatory interview with the reinstatement committee.

The reforms have not satisfied student activists at Yale, where the mental health problems playing out on many American campuses has been especially prominent.

(cut)

In recent years, Yale has also faced an “explosion” in demand for mental health counseling, university officials said. Last year, roughly 5,000 Yale students sought treatment — a 90 percent increase compared with 2015.

“It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Hoffman, the director of Yale Mental Health and Counseling. Roughly 34 percent of the 14,500 students at 

Yale seek mental health help from college counselors, compared with a national average of 11 percent at other universities.

Meeting that need has been challenging, even at a school with a $41.4 billion endowment.

Bluebelle Carroll, 20, a Yale sophomore who sought help in September 2021, said she waited six months to be assigned a therapist. She secured her first appointment only after emailing the counseling staff repeatedly.

“The appointment was 20 minutes long,” she said, “and we spent the last five minutes figuring out when he could see me again.”

Because of staffing constraints, students are often asked to choose between weekly therapy that lasts 30 minutes or 45-minute sessions every two weeks.