Midnight in Amherst

In late January, a Yale College sophomore named Luchang Wang flew to San Francisco and committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. She left a note that read “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.”

An article titled When Mentally Ill Students Feel Alone by The Atlantic does a great job explaining the story in full.

Wang’s suicide sparked outrage among the Yale student population, causing some to come forward to speak out about how Yale’s withdrawal and readmission policies fall short of helping students and in some cases, increasing their stress levels. Students from other Ivy League schools, like Princeton or Brown, came forward and said their situation isn’t much different. Though Ivy League schools are seen as the pinnacle of student success, offering the best education, opportunities, and connections, state universities are picking up the slack by providing extensive opportunities for students to access mental health resources or take the time off needed to improve, more-so than their Ivy League counterparts.

At UMass Amherst, students can either voluntarily request to withdraw from classes or involuntarily be removed from classes by the university under “life-threatening circumstances,” both of which are reviewed and approved by the University Health Services medical director. Typically, students are only required to take one semester off. UMass Amherst’s policies can be seen here

Yale’s withdrawal and readmission policies begin by stating “readmission is not guaranteed to any applicant” in the first sentence of the long-winded page of policies. They also state that if a student withdraws twice, they won’t be able to return to Yale. Students that withdraw for personal reasons are required to stay away for at least one fall and spring semester, not including the semester of withdrawal. Students that withdraw for medical reasons are required to stay away for at least one semester, not including the semester of withdrawal. Grievances toward these policies are spelled out in Wang’s last words on the note she left.

Furthermore, Yale students are required to stay productive while away from college, urging them to get jobs, volunteer, or intern somewhere and take two Yale summer classes or courses at another university if they withdraw mid semester. Finally, they require students to be interviewed by the Committee on Readmission before being able to return. Yale’s policies can be read here.

A sophomore UMass student, who asked to remain anonymous, was involuntarily removed from UMass for being seen as a risk to herself, causing her to miss one week of school and her spring break. After two weeks she was able to return and finish the semester, making it easier on both the university and the student. Had she gone to Yale, she would have been required to take at least a year off from her education.

UMass’s short withdrawal and readmission page links students to a readmission application that states all students who were previously enrolled at the Amherst campus in an undergraduate degree program and who plan to re-enroll after a period of non-enrollment are able to file an application, including students returning after academic suspension or dismissal and students who left in good academic standing and who want to return to active status, basically saying that any student that withdrew for any reason, be it personal, medical, or academic has the ability to apply to be readmitted.

Some of the ideas proposed to make Yale students more comfortable with mental health included updating the withdrawal and readmission policies, promoting mental health education, creating peer-support groups, starting workshops for freshmen, and encouraging university officials to speak more about mental health.

Elle Berch-Heyman, an outreach coordinator and psychiatric social worker at the Center for Counseling & Psychological Health discussed some of the differences between the two types of group sessions offered by CCPH. Therapy groups are closed, requiring students to meet with a clinician and go through a pre-screening process. Students in group therapy sessions meet regularly to discuss some of the problems they are facing to get feedback from other students, allowing them to connect with people that are in a similar boat. Some of the therapy groups offered are Anxiety & Relationships, Women’s Graduate Group, Men, Talking, Living with Anxiety, Living with Loss, LGBTQIA Discussion and Support, and Making Connections.

“I love co-facilitating groups,” Heyman said. “I think it’s such a meaningful experience to bear witness to the support because the students find talking to other students so comforting, so reassuring, and so empowering, that other students are experiencing some of the same challenges and they can talk to other students that can relate,”

The other types of group session are skills workshops. Workshops run all semester and students can come and go as they please and don’t require a pre-screening process. “Workshops are a way that we try to respond to the campus and meet needs,” Heyman said. At the workshops, students learn and share skills like learning how to target intense emotions, how to maintain a healthy well-being, how to face challenges, and taking risks. Some of the skills workshops offered are Koru: Mindfulness and Meditation, Coping Skills for Managing Anxiety and Depression, and Stress Management.

The CCPH works with other departments like the Center for Health Promotion and University Health Services at events like UDay, an all-day de-stress fest with games, acupuncture from UHS, meditation workshops, and yoga, among many others. CHP also hosts the PAWS program events, giving students their dose of puppy love by playing with some service dogs.

“We all are supporting student wellness, so we try to communicate with each other and we try to use synergy to support wellness.” Heyman said. “I think that we’re doing a good job and we keep trying to do a better job.”

UMass Amherst also has a club called Active Minds, a national group that holds events to end the stigma around mental health through education and advocacy. Their UMass page can be seen here and their Facebook page can be seen here.

Mental health education varies between each university and college, but it doesn’t have to start when students get to college. Recently, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled Good Mental Health Away From Home Starts before College that discusses important things for high school students to learn and practice being an adult before embarking on their journey through college. Some skills include making appointments, traveling solo, managing a budget, managing emotions, and getting enough sleep; skills that most college students are still learning the ropes of.

• Avengers: Age of Ultron

It should be obvious that Avengers is on this list, boasting a heavy hitting cast and breaking box offices all over the world. The sequel will be released in the U.S on May 1 and is the long awaited sequel to The Avengers (2012)

• Ant-Man

The story of a conman turned superhero, Ant-Man is finally getting his own movie which will place him in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, so hopefully we’ll see him in future Avengers movies. Ant-man is set to be released in theaters on July 17.

 

• The Fantastic Four

Nowadays, it seems that all Hollywood has up its sleeves are reboots and sequels. One of those reboots is of the Fantastic Four. I don’t know why they’re rebooting it because they haven’t announced that the films will be a part of the new Marvel Cinematic Universe, but either way it looks amazing and is set to release on August 7.

• Jurassic World

When I was a kid, nothing was cooler to me than dinosaurs. Conveniently, Jurassic Park was also released in 1994 with a slew of other great movies. Twenty one years later and I’m giddier about this movie than I was as a kid. It is set to hit theaters on June 12.

• Terminator: Genisys

While Google and Apple are dominating the tech market and creating smart cars that can drive themselves, it’s not hard to imagine a world that gets taken over by artificial intelligence determined to kill off humanity. I have no idea what is going on with the terminator storyline in this film but it looks awesome, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is in it, so that’s a plus. Genisys has a release date of June 25.

• Mad Max: Fury Road

The last time fans saw Mad Max, he was escaping the Thunderdome in 1985. Since then, director George Miller has been creating a masterpiece, and after 30 years, it’s finally here. Set in a post-apocalyptic desert world, Mad Max, played by Tom Hardy, has to survive a massive convoy of apocalyptic barbarian raider punks with in the middle of a sandstorm. The long overdue sequel will be released on May 15.

After being helplessly stuck in the clutches of a project in the bowels of the library for six hours, getting ignored after calling CCPH and other sources, and not being able to make it to any of the group meetings this week, I feel totally spent on things to write about for this project.

I guess I’ll end the week on a lighter note by sharing some mental health awareness videos.

In lieu of the trend of posts about mental health this week, today’s post is going to shift the focus from what colleges are doing to how students and parents prepare themselves for the independence and responsibility that one must endure when they get to school.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal posted an article called Good Mental Health Away From Home Starts before College, and as the title implies, discusses numerous things that students can do to ready themselves, sort of like practicing to be an adult. Here are some of the things high school students can do to brace for impact.

• Practice calling to make doctors or dentist appointments

No one wants to get the flu during midterms and have to call their parents and ask for them to call the doctor and set up appointments. Students should probably schedule physical appointments during the summer and become familiar with the health services at their college or university.

• Get enough sleep

I know from experience that my roommate, who stays up for two days and nights straight on the weekends and then stays up all night throughout the week doing schoolwork in the studio arts building that sleep is important. Without it, you miss class, fall asleep during class, lose focus, and it’s bad for your health. Do yourself a favor, get some sleep.

• Learn how to travel on your own

As a new college student, one of the newfound freedoms you get is the agility to travel whenever you can manage the time or money, going into cities for concerts, going with friends on road trips, studying abroad, and using the busses to explore the area. It’s beneficial to learn the ropes and how to get out on your own.

• Speak with teachers on your own

You’re an adult now and you’re training to become a professional in some field, it’s about time that you should stop having your parents mediate between you and the professor.

• Learn to manage a budget

Every college student says they’re broke, yet somehow find ways to party on the weekends and do laundry. It definitely pays off knowing how not to overspend and keep track of money. I feel bad for continually referring to him, but you don’t want to be like my roommate who spends his entire biweekly paycheck in one day and end up broke for two weeks.

• Manage your emotions

The sad truth about college is that you’re most likely going to meet a lot of new people and make a lot of new friends, but most of them won’t be there the whole ride. People move and friendships fade, students transfer or drop out, relationships turn sour, people change, and you can find yourself feeling lonely and abandoned. Controlling those feelings and positively working with them is an important step to maintaining a healthy mind and relationships.

As I groggily made my way down the stairs to leave my dorm and head to class, the bulletin board caught my eye. Over a four foot span, neon colored fliers riddled the black board and each one of them was promoting mental health awareness. Some of the workshops they advertise are Anxiety & Relationships, Living with Anxiety, Stress Management Drop -in Workshop, Coping Skills Workshop, Making Connections, LGBTQIA Discussion and Support Group, and Men, Talking. Most of the workshops take place during the week in the Hills North building and address issues students face like struggling with identity, having trouble making friends, or struggling with mental illness. Some of the fliers were also posted up on the board outside Franklin dining common and on some of the bulletin boards in classrooms, littered among concert fliers, guest speakers, and course guides.

I plan on attending some of the meetings within the next week. It seems like the environment would be very positive and comfortable due to the fact that all of the students that join are in the same boat, immediately giving them something in common.

Later, I stopped in the campus center to grab some Indian cuisine at Harvest and I passed a sea of students tabling for various clubs like the International Socialist Organization, the Theatre Guild, and Active Minds, a national group that holds events to end the stigma around mental health through education and advocacy. Their UMass page can be seen here and their Facebook page can be seen here.

Looking back, I remembered that last semester, in the first week of December, the Peer Health Program brought service dogs from the Paws Program around campus to visit students. I walked into the library and saw two giant dogs and immediately went over to see both of them, and I wasn’t the only one. In fact, students flocked to see the dogs and everyone was smiling. For me, seeing and playing with dogs is always really therapeutic, especially when I go home from school and see my dog for the first time in weeks. The Paws Program makes visiting service dogs on campus much more accessible and it most likely is a tremendous help for a lot of students.

Alternatively, UMass also offers yoga, meditation groups, and acupuncture to promote health and mindfulness.

It’s pretty clear that UMass is quite active in promoting support groups for students and giving them multiple outlets to experiment and see what works for them, aside from simply visiting with a therapist or psychiatrist at the CCPH, which is an important step to take because people vary in so many different ways and mental health is so complex that one treatment can’t be expected to work for everyone.

After reviewing the policies of both schools, the University of Massachusetts Amherst withdrawal and readmission policies seem much looser than Yale College’s, giving students more leeway when taking time off. UMass Amherst’s policies can be seen here and Yale’s can be seen here.

One of the first differences I noticed were the requirements for how long students needed to take off before being readmitted. At UMass Amherst, students can either voluntarily request to withdraw from classes or involuntarily be removed from classes by the university under “life-threatening circumstances,” both of which are reviewed and approved by the UHS medical director.  Typically, students are only required to take one semester off.

Yale’s policies begin by stating “readmission is not guaranteed to any applicant” in the first sentence of the longwinded page of policies, immediately setting a different tone than UMass’s minimalist page. They also state that if a student withdraws twice, they won’t be able to return. Students that withdraw for personal reasons are required to away for at least one fall and spring semester, not including the semester of withdrawal. Students that withdraw for medical reasons are required to stay away for at least one semester, not including the semester of withdrawal. Furthermore, Yale students are required to stay productive while away from college, urging them to get jobs, volunteer, or intern somewhere and take two Yale summer classes or courses at another university if they withdraw mid semester. Finally, they require students to be interviewed by the Committee on Readmission before being able to return.

What if a student doesn’t need an entire semester for medical or personal reasons, let alone two full semesters? Or what if a student isn’t able to work or volunteer while they are withdrawn? A friend of mine that was involuntarily removed from UMass for mental health missed one week of school and her spring break, but was able to return and finish the semester, which seems like a better option for the university and the student. It seems that students at Yale that withdraw for any reason have a lot of hoops to jump though.

UMass’s short withdrawal and readmission page links students to a readmission application that states “WHO SHOULD USE THIS APPLICATION?  All students who were previously enrolled at the Amherst campus in an undergraduate degree program and who plan to re-enroll after a period of non-enrollment should file this application.  This includes:  Students returning after academic suspension or dismissal.  Students who left in good academic standing and who want to return to active status.  These students are eligible to apply for readmission for any academic session,” basically saying that any student that withdrew for any reason, be it personal, medical, or academic has the ability to apply to be readmitted.

Sometime last month, while perusing my news feed I came across an article by The Atlantic titled When Mentally Ill Students Feel Alone. As a bit of an introvert that has gone through a few bouts of depression, the topic immediately peaked my interests. The article focused on a suicide committed by a Yale College student in late January and the resulting call for reform of withdrawal and readmission policies of Ivy League schools like Yale, Princeton, Brown, or Duke.

After the suicide, multiple students from Yale and other Ivy League schools spoke out about the high levels of stress that the universities put on students, causing them to fear seeking help with mental health troubles because it is probable that they won’t be allowed to return. Yale’s withdrawal and readmission policies can be read here.

As I read the article, I considered my own situation at UMass Amherst and the visits to the Center for Counseling and Psychological Health after having trouble making friends, resulting and loneliness and some self-doubt. Though I never needed to take time off from school, the thought was always worrisome on the back of my mind, especially as an independent student with finances, educational success, and my goals for the future all competing to stress me out the most. Off the top of my head, I can think of two friends of mine that are currently taking or had recently taken time off from UMass to better their mental health, one of which was by choice, the other by choice of the university.

Both of them are still enrolled and plan on continuing their education next semester and it seems they had little trouble from the university taking time off from school and then returning, which makes me wonder what is different about UMass that makes it easier and more comfortable for students to take time off as opposed to the Ivy League schools.

Some of the ideas proposed to make Yale students more comfortable with mental health included updating the withdrawal and readmission policies, promoting mental health education, creating peer-support groups, starting workshops for freshmen, and encouraging university officials to speak more about mental health.

Over the next week, I’m going to speak with representatives from the UMass CCPH and some friends about the withdrawal and readmission policies at UMass and some of the experiences students and staff have gone through. I will also be looking into UMass Amherst’s mental health programs to see if our policies, mental health education, and peer groups foster a more positive environment, like Yale students suggest will happen there. Mental health has become a huge problem for millennials, and between college debt and weak job markets, the last thing students should worry about is being able to take time off in order to better their situation.

Mark Hay is a freelance-writer and blogger that sometimes works for Vice, Slate, GOOD Magazine, Modern Notion, and The Economist about cultural topics like faith, identity politics, and sexuality. He studied at the University of Oxford and his research focuses on Islamic Identities and Kingdoms in East Africa, he has a basic understanding of multiple languages, and blogs about his travels, which have taken him through East Africa, Central Asia, Pakistan, underground tunnels in New York, and a bunch of other places.

As a blogger, Hay has four personal blogs that encompass his interests, like Ramble While You Ramble, his travel blog, Somnus Scriptura, a blog about dreams and dream theory, Tacos in Tajikistan, a blog about Mexican food around the world, and The Sartorial Islamist, a blog about Islamic apparel and its significance. The latter two are still under construction. He also has a series of stories about his travels in Asia called The Central Asian Saga. He also is working on two projects, the New Muslim Survey, a survey of experiences of Muslim converts, and Speaking in Tongues, a religious studies podcast.

Hay reports for Vice on a regular basis, typically every day or every other day, and has six pages of articles to read, beginning in 2013. He has only written two articles for Slate, the first being How Do You Like Your Camel Meat?, about camel trade in Somaliland, which immediately reminded me of an article he wrote for Vice titled It’s Surprisingly Legal to Eat Lion Meat, which focuses on lions being eaten as a delicacy in Zimbabwe. His second Slate article is Nomads on the Grid, where he talks about bringing modern technologies to Mongolia’s large nomadic population. At the top of the GOOD Magazine homepage is an article titled Cheese So Good, You Can Take It to the Bank, where Hay describes how Italian farmers are now able to pay banks with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. All of his works can be found on his Contently page.

In comparison to other journalists that cover a similar range of topics, Hay’s work tends to be somewhat off-beat and less cookie cutter. For example, journalists that focus on culture, faith, and identity are likely to write about social movements, protests, or riots at some point. Rather than taking a predictable angle, Hay instead chose to write A Brief History of People Protesting Stuff with Poop for Vice. The headline is attention grabbing, though a bit raunchy. The article is a balance of recent history, citing protests all over the world since 2008, poop related puns like “Diarrheic dissent,” “shit slinging,” “anal activism,” and “a mass public shit-in,” and how the taboo of using poop as a form of protest is seen as a last resort for angry protesters.

The off-beat twist that Hay adds seems to be the selling point for him because as I scroll through his articles, they each catch my eye for being outlandish and about some random part of the world. Other articles he has written are A Finnish Punk Band with Learning Disabilities is Going to Eurovision, How Courts Treat Consensual Cannibals, and In the Future, Your Phone Will Be Built by Thousands of Robot Ants.

I really enjoy his writing style because he is informative with his news stories, articulating history and reporting on current events, all while casually sprinkling in humor and firsthand accounts from his travels. In his camel meat article, he says

“No one really runs the market. It’s just one of dozens of sites across the country where nomads, locals, and traders converge daily to buy and sell thousands of live animals, some for the neighborhood butcher’s block, others for export.”

Here, he casually paints a descriptive picture of animal trade in Somaliland; he writes like he is speaking to you. At times, his work can be a bit opinionated, but none of his articles are solely opinion pieces. His work for Slate and GOOD Magazine seem to be a bit more formal than his work for Vice, trading humor and lighthearted puns for reporting that comes off as just a bit more serious.

Most of his articles are on the longer side, typically falling between 700 to 1,500 words with his Slate articles being the longest, Vice in the middle, and his shorter pieces for the Economist. His articles on Slate and The Economist receive a few comments, most of which are about the subject-matter and not so much about Hay’s quality of work. For some reason, his Vice articles don’t receive many comments unless they find their way to the Vice Facebook page. In Cash Transfers in Africa – Bitcoin for the Poor, an article Hay wrote for The Economist, commenters discuss Bitcoin saying:

“The biggest beneficiaries of the dollar hegemony, the US financial and political elites, will probably have a pretty easy time shutting this one down if it ever becomes big.All they will have to do is to put pressure on African governments to regulate these ATMs to death. Like getting Egyptians to interrogate prisoners, in this world there is generally no problem for these people to get other other countries to do what they can’t do at home,”

or

“Wow this could really be a big change. I am switching to a new platform (Virtex) soon, but I continue to be amazed at what Bitcoin is doing.”

Hay has a decent social media reputation with 913 Twitter followers and 2,300 followers on Contently. Combined, his articles have 18,000 shares and about the same number of likes on Facebook. On his Twitter, he announces when he is traveling somewhere for a story and asks if anyone has leads for other stories to look into while there, which I thought was pretty cool.

If I was given the opportunity to have Mark Hay’s job, I would most likely take it. It seems like he travels the world, researches into topics that may not be the most pressing or dire, but are stories that he finds interesting and thinks should have some light shed on them, which is important for his American audience, who can get stuck in a bubble with a limited world view. I’m interested in a wide range of cultural topics and really want to travel, so hopefully my work will take me in the same direction.

My next project is to study and write about a blogger, writer, or reporter that I find enjoyable and interesting and can use as a potential model for my own career. One of my favorite online news sources is Vice News because their documentary work is well-done, though a bit sensational sometimes, and their writers are all pretty casual and have a sense of humor in their pieces.

One journalist I would like to emulate is Mark Hay, a freelance-writer and blogger that has written for Vice, Slate, and the Economist about cultural topics like faith, identity politics, and sexuality. His research focuses on Islamic Identities and Kingdoms in East Africa, he has a basic understanding of multiple languages, and blogs about his travels, which have taken him through East Africa, Central Asia, Pakistan, and underground tunnels in New York.

The first article I read by Hay on Vice was “Archaeologists Might Have Just Excavated a Secret Nazi Hideout in Argentina,” which immediately caught my eye for archaeology and the peculiarity that the Nazis were in Argentina. Some of his other articles include “A Finnish Punk Band with Learning Disabilities is Going to Eurovision,” “ It’s Surprisingly Legal to Eat Lion Meat,” and “Iceland to Build Pagan Temple- Followers of Odin, Freya, and Thor Rejoice.” He covers a huge variety of issues that are occurring all across the globe.

As a student double-majoring in journalism and anthropology, I want to find a way to blend my cultural-research with my writing to share with the world. Mark Hay seems to have found that perfect blend.

Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times, covers a similar beat with topics like human rights, women’s rights, health, and global affairs. Kristof has lived on multiple continents, traveled to over 150 countries, and speaks multiple languages including Chinese and Japanese. Notably, he was also the New York Times’ first blogger.

Personally, I think some of Kristof’s best works are his documentary stories, one of which is an HBO documentary titled Reporter, which is about the humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The second is a documentary on Netflix that features Kristof as a source, titled Tricked; it is about sex trafficking in the United States.

Kristof seems to be a successful journalist to have as a role model because he covers meaningful topics and is willing to travel far and wide to get the best stories. He also likes running and backpacking, so he just seems like a pretty cool guy.