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Thanksgiving and time with family in general has much more significance now that I am in college. Being away for extended periods of time, coupled with maturing and acquiring education and skills, allows me to appreciate the members of my family so much more. (Although I do get sick of being bombarded every holiday by questions from my family about why I’m still single, why I’m a Communications major, what my future is, etc., but apparently that’s pretty common for 20-something’s to get from their families, and I know they do it out of love). Regardless, I wish I could spend more than a few times a year with these members of my family. Holidays and the reminder of family also cause me to wish I could be with now the members of my family that have passed away, such as my grandma, who was a sociologist and a world-renowned peace activist, or my aunt, who was the Italian spark of the family and who cared for our wellbeing more than anyone. I would appreciate them and connect with them so much more at this point in my life.
My cousin has two sons, a 2- and 3-year old, who recently moved back home to Ohio with her. I have always been the youngest, and having two little children in the family is something new for me, but it is a total joy. I wish I could spend everyday with them, although I barely see them at all. As my cousins and sister and I move up and make room for a new generation of our family, I am grateful for my ancestry, and will pass what I have inherited from them onto the future of our family.
Thank you to Akash Sharma for your thought-provoking comments to my article on college smoking. I am in no way offended and always enjoy conversation and debate! In response, I am not a smoker myself, but I am not in favor of a smoke-free campus either. Smokers deserve a fair opportunity for education just like anyone else, and a smoke-free campus makes that difficult. In my article, I tried to just write from what I heard in the interviews, and there simply seemed to be a large consensus against smoking. However, there were comments that I included fighting for smokers’ rights, such as Steve Heaslip and his “monsters and villains” comment. I certainly could appreciate these arguments, and was encouraged by accommodations made for smokers, such as “smoke shacks”. We at Ohio State have a 25-feet rule, which in mainly kept in place so that smoke doesn’t enter into windows and affect people negatively, such as asthmatics, and as long as residents who are smokers comply by this, everything seems to work out fine. But as a resident advisor I do notice the stigma on smokers, and notice the difficulty of complying by the rule in bad weather. These issues seem to cause tensions between smokers and nonsmokers that could be prevented with smoker accommodations and fair regulations.
I do want to add that as a resident advisor, I am also very much so an advocate of student health, so it is more important for me personally to educate a resident about the effects of smoking and second-hand smoke than to just tell them to move because the law says so. We’re in college now and old enough to make our own health decisions…but we also all have to live and learn together, and that’s going to involve some compromise on all ends.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s strange as I progress into college, though. First of all, it isn’t much of a “Break” per se, as it is looming behind Finals week and end of the quarter. It’s hard to separate oneself from the academic stresses for a few days of family, just to be thrown in again full-force on Monday. Secondly, as one gets older, family changes more and more, and consequently so do holidays. People pass away or move or get divorced…and people can be added on as well, through marriage or adoption or birth. As I become an adult and precious holidays my family members take on new meaning, the group gets ever smaller. My sister, who just got married and moved to Texas this summer, won’t be coming home for Thanksgiving this year. Who can with the price of flights? I find myself connected to my older family members better than ever. However, I also sense a disconnect from the younger generation in my family and my childhood ideal of the holidays….and see less and less people around the dinner table. Regardless, and although I will be missing my sister more than I ever thought I would, I am thankful for the family I have and I am looking forward to the memories I will have with them this coming weekend.
This weekend, I went with some residents to the Indian Students Association/Indian American Association dance performance. The students showcased many different dances from India, some traditional and many modern. The theme of the show was integrating the American and the Indian cultures together. There were two hosts of the show, an “Americanized” girl from India and another Indian girl in traditional Indian clothes and an Indian accent. They slowly influenced each other throughout the show and by the end they had completely switched roles. I knew many students there from past organizations and such, who I knew were from India but I never knew their talents and how richly they celebrated their culture. The dancing was phenomenal. The Indian student population is very rich at Ohio State, as it is at many American colleges. It’s an easy thing to miss on an everyday basis, but it is much too beautiful not to be a cherished part of the University.
The simulation for my Foreign Policy class has been really interesting. For the first day, we each had meetings with different “countries” as representatives of our country. I met with France, Syria, and Russia. I can’t divulge too much information lest someone from another country happens to read this blog, but it was definitely a challenge to talk to countries based on what they wanted to hear, and based on what we were willing to tell them, in order to achieve our goals for North Korea. This weekend, we are writing up press releases for the “public” and requesting specific meetings with countries next week. Between this week and Tuesday, and next Thursday and the following Tuesday, nine months is passing in terms of the game. However, between Tuesday and Thursday, only 72 hours is passing. That means we have to be strategic about the decisions we make and whether they can happen short-term, or they take nine months to have a major affect or even be attainable. I have felt overwhelmed studying all these countries and North Korea’s background in order to be prepared, but this is one of the most interesting ways I’ve learned in college thus far.
This week in my Foreign Policy Decision Making class, we are doing a simulation game. We are in teams as different major countries. My team is North Korea, but we are playing against countries such as Iraq, Iran, the U.S., China, Russia, South Korea, Pakistan, France, Turkey, etc…For research, we have been reading newspaper articles from our countries, translated by the CIA and put onto a database called World News Connection to which Ohio State subscribes. This has been an eye-opener to see what other countries think….especially what North Korea thinks of us (it’s not good). We are going to the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, part of OSU campus, for the “game”, which will last four days. We will be given the scenario of the world today, with some adjustments and advancements, and we must decide what our country would do. I’m excited for this, and I love that we actually get to apply what we’ve learned to something, but I have no idea what to expect. It should definitely make for an interesting blog next week.
I wrote another article at my internship about smoking on campuses, which hits close to home from the RA perspective. Here it is:
College students are starting to think twice about where they light up on campus. State smoking laws are becoming much stricter with the public’s increased awareness about health risks of first- and second-hand smoke, and colleges and universities, along with their residence halls, are following suit. More than 140 campuses are now smoke-free, with 500 campuses implementing smoke-free policies in the residence halls, according to the American Lung Association, and those numbers are growing. The most recent change comes from the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), which banned smoking on the campuses of the system’s 14 universities in September 2008. This creation of a completely smoke-free state university system is unprecedented, and stems from the state legislation banning smoking in all public places, which went into effect the following day.
Since the state of Illinois banned smoking in public places and work places in January 2008, Southern Illinois University in Carbondale has complied by altering its restriction of smoking 15 feet away from all buildings to 25 feet away. Julie Payne Kirchmeier, director of university housing, has observed both positive and negative outcomes; “When we are questioned by smokers, our response is that it’s a state law, and it closes down the discussion. It makes it easy to enforce, but you don’t get to have an educational conversation about the effects of smoking.” SUIC’s tobacco committee is aiming for a “smoke-free” campus, but Kirchmeier sees no need to implement restrictions further than the state law; “There are people who chose to do it, and it’s legal. Why would we continue to infringe upon their rights?”
The concern for smokers’ rights is a heated one within this issue. Many institutions try to set up accommodations for their smokers, such as designated smoking areas.
The California Maritime Academy in Vallejo has two “smoke-shacks” kept a distance from their residence halls. The smaller outdoor room is eight-square-feet of Plexiglas with a metal roof, costing the school $8000, and the larger one is sixteen-square-feet and slated with a solid roof, costing $18,000. Executive director of Auxiliary Services Diane Rawicz believes the price is worth it “if smokers have a place that’s comfortable, and it reduces the litter and smoke that goes up into the residence hall rooms.” There are also five other smoking areas on campus.
The students, staff and faculty at Cal Maritime participated in a campus-wide forum and expressed adamant concern about their right to smoke, according to Rawicz. As a result, the school set up the designated smoking areas. “If there’s a place for them to go, they’ll go there,” said Rawicz. “They don’t feel shunned because they are with other smokers.”
Steve Heaslip, manager of auxiliary services at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, argues that there should be residence halls specifically for smokers. “The residence hall is your home if you are a student, and you should have a right to be comfortable for the price you pay,” said Heaslip. “Smokers are deemed as monsters and villains. People are giving up their freedoms without a fight and it’s pathetic.”
When considering accommodations for the rights of smokers, schools find that today’s general student population prefers a smoke-free environment, and they must cater to the needs of the majority.
In July 2007, The State University of New York Board of Trustees implemented a policy that banned all smoking on campuses and in residence halls. The remaining nine percent of SUNY schools that still allowed smoking, including SUNY Morrisville, worried at first about the student response. However, students reacted positively. “The transition was a lot easier than we anticipated,” said Armanda King, director of residence life at SUNY Morrisville. “The concern from the faculty and staff was if students couldn’t smoke in residence halls, it would affect their decision to come here. That wasn’t the case at all.”
At Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, the student government voted twice to restrict smoking, but it was never implemented by the university. Finally, students took action to execute a thirty-foot restriction trial for thirty days, led by the student government, which was a big success among the campus population. “Student government is the way to go,” said Duke Divine, director of business services at Washburn University, disappointed that the trial policy wasn’t permanently put into effect by the university. “Administration doesn’t want to push a policy on their other administrators.”
There are potential difficulties of enforcing smoking restrictions within both the student and administration population. Many are concerned with the distance constraints stepping over the line of control. “Either way, it’s a barrier,” explains Divine. “People still walk through the smoke, they just do it thirty feet away. I think there does need to be designated areas because everyone has rights, but I do worry about creating these barriers.”
Schools have found creative ways of encouraging compliance. At the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, the housing department once provided smoking rooms in residence halls and apartments, but eventually transitioned into a smoke-free department with a thirty foot restriction, due to health concerns and fire hazards. To ease the transition, housing staff added ashtrays and picnic tables thirty feet away and put on residence hall programs to create clay pots for cigarette butts. “We walk a fine line within housing,” said Laurie Berry, director of housing and residence life. “We’d rather you not smoke, but we won’t tell you that you can’t. We treat our students as adults. It’s legal and it’s their choice to make.” However, Berry also recognizes that there must be consequences from the Housing standpoint, and gives out sanctions to violators to clean up cigarette butts outside on Saturday mornings, deemed “Super Saturdays.”
The transition to smoke-free can bring its difficulties. Kenn Marshall, media relations manager of PASSHE, says that with the new Pennsylvania ban, “there was some pushback initially, like there is with any new policy, but the vocal complaints have died down.” The residence halls at California University of Pennsylvania had previously gone smoke-free with ease. “It went fairly well when we banned smoking in the residence halls because we give plenty of notice and we informed, communicated, and educated,” said Shawn Urbine, associate dean of residential facilities. “That’s what is needed when major changes are made. It’s important to have a plan, such as designated smoking areas.”
Combating smoking on campuses goes beyond stricter policies. The colleges and universities must work with students who wish to quit smoking in order to abide by the policies.
Many institutions are working with the American Lung Association’s Smokefree Air 2010 Challenge, a program aimed at making all public places in America smoke-free by 2010. When working with college campuses to create smoking restrictions, the American Lung Association also encourages reliable cessation programs. “Effective tobacco cessation services need to be available to students, faculty and staff on all college and university campuses to help addicted tobacco users quit,” said Tom Carr, Manager of National Policy for the American Lung Association. Marshall agrees that with Pennsylvania’s new state-wide ban, there is a demand from campuses for the resources to quit smoking; “One of the side effects of the new law is an increase in students seeking smoking cessation programs. It’s inconvenient to go off campus to smoke, so students have incentive to quit.”
At Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, where smoking in public was recently banned, students, staff and faculty have formed a committee for their campus called Healthy Campus 2010, part of a national campaign by the American College Health Association. The committee focuses on healthy behaviors in 28 areas, such as fitness and alcohol use, but they have focused their most recent efforts on smoking. At SIUC, a representative from the Housing department sits on the tobacco committee, which created the Livefree Tobacco Initiative in order to educate students on the new smoking policy and provide resources for quitting tobacco.
The housing department at the University of Southern Indiana also puts on programs with the health center surrounding the topic of smoking cessation. Director Berry recognizes the difficultly of creating a smoke-free residence hall and campus, but also sees the benefits. “I think it’s worth it. Not only for the health concerns, but it also cuts down on roommate conflicts,” says Berry, explaining that before this policy was implemented, students would often lie on housing contracts about if they were smokers or not. “Parents would fill it out for them or look over their shoulder. Then it would come up and manifest itself in roommate conflicts.”
At SIUC, Kirchmeier also agrees that there are benefits despite the struggle, but that the greatest result is a happy and healthy population of residents in the halls; “It’s all about the students’ health and well-being.”
I have been thinking more and more about the study abroad opportunities I might have access to through Phi Kappa Phi. My Honors Literature and Religion professor, Daniel Reff, also is the head of the Honors committee. The other day in class, he said that it is a shame that so few Honors students study abroad (I believe it is one in five), and that one should not be allowed to graduate without spending time out of the country. We expressed out frustration at the expense and the fact that we are so tied in to our Honors contracts (an individualized plan of classes an Honors student will take in order to graduate with Honors), there’s no time to study abroad without delaying graduation. We had an open dialogue for about an hour where for the first time in my experience Honors students were allowed to just freely…complain about the situation we are in. We are constantly working on this contract and getting classes approved, it doesn’t allow us time to study abroad or write a senior thesis, experiences that would allow us to apply some of that Honors knowledge. I’m grateful Professor Reff really listened to what we had to say, although I was surprised how unaware he was about Honors students feeling this way. Perhaps we will see some change in the coming years…it is a shame to in any way prevent bright students from taking advantage of every opportunity, just because of bureaucracy.
I was inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi academic honorary today. I normally am not a fan of these honoraries, and particularly not a fan of these ceremonies. It seems a strange concept that an organization congratulates you along with hundreds of other students on your achievements and then asks for a few to join. I finally decided to join, though, based on my mother’s persuasion and the fact that there are seemingly many benefits, like potential for scholarships and study abroad grants. Vice President Joe Alutto spoke at the ceremony along with some other familiar OSU faces. I love that at a school even this large I recognize faces of acquaintances and friends in ever room I enter. Some of it was tedious, but it did get me thinking about taking advantage of these benefits. After all, they offer them in order to combine our achievements that got us into the organization with a little help and opportunity on the side. This is something I will keep in mind…but for today I was just thrilled for another opportunity to sing Carmen Ohio.
This weekend was Parents’ Weekend, and it was the first time my mom has decided to come on a Parents’ Weekend. She paid the registration fee, but we didn’t actually end up doing any scheduled Parents’ Weekend activities. There’s enough going on in Columbus that we didn’t even need to. We went to see Jimmy Fallon, a free event put on by OUAB (Ohio Union Activities Board). We ate at some nice restaurants in the Short North , including Jeni’s Ice Cream , which I swear to you in the best and most unusual ice cream you will ever have. We went the Wexner Center for the Arts to see the Andy Warhol exhibit (free for students), explored the Farmers’ Market at North Market, did some shopping of course, and just walked around Goodale Park and campus and enjoyed the beautiful weekend. I love Columbus so much. Even my mother, who isn’t really a fan of cities and crowds, fell in love with it.
I’m going to do a program for my residents where I bring in someone from Experience Columbus to talk about all there is in this great city. It’s a shame to live here for four + years and not take advantage of all the fantastic experiences available!
I’m getting ready to schedule on Monday. It is a strange feeling because I am starting to see the end of the tunnel! Without counting the quarter I plan to spend in Washington, D.C. next year, I have four quarters left to schedule. By the end of this year, I’ll be finally done with my GEC’s and almost done with my Communications major! I can’t believe I am almost through this giant list of classes that seemed so overwhelming as a freshman.
I think I am going to take History of South Africa, Contemporary Persuasion Theory, Communication in Personal Relationships, and Global Climate and Environment Change. This will cover history, communications, and science, and will be 20 hours of a wide range of topics. At this point, however, it’s always subject to change, especially this early in the game. But it certainly gets us excited for the Winter ahead!
I went to an information session this week for the Washington D.C. Academic Internship Program through the John Glenn School of Public Affairs. This is something I have been considering for a long time, and when I met with an advisor this summer about the graduate school program, he recommended this to me. You can get an internship essentially anywhere in D.C., where you work full time four days a week in the quarter you are there. You also write a 25-page policy paper and take a seminar class. Apparently the work load is unimaginably hard, but it is incredibly worthwhile. One of my residents went last year and raves about the experience.
I started looking up internships online last night. There are a lot with the media I could get, like at CNN or the Center for Media and Public Affairs, but I also am really getting interested in international relations and policy. I plan on going Autumn quarter of next year, but I would jump at the chance to go sooner if it weren’t for the RA job. I will just have to be patient and develop the skill set and knowledge I hope to bring to the table to make the most of the experience.
This quarter is destroying me. I literally plan every minute of every day, and I still will never be caught up. I read hundreds of pages a night for my classes, while trying to finish all my RA work and get to know my residents and plan programs, not forgetting that I work my internship three days a week. Plus, staying healthy and getting a good night’s sleep is extremely important to me…although that’s been pushed to the back burner a bit.
Although, I must say, I am probably going to gain more from this quarter than any other quarter so far. I am being forced to read so much for my classes, but it is on topics I have wanted to read more about…current affairs, foreign policy, religion, feminist studies. I am learning how to read a lot in a short amount of time while still understanding the information and thinking critically about it. Hopefully I can keep this habit up in the future…or at least for the rest of the quarter. As stressed out as I am, I am enthralled by all of my classes, and I am discovering more of my passions.
So I decided to take Comparative Studies H202.01: Literature and Religion this quarter. It counts as an Arts and Humanities GEC, and I chose it because I don’t have a very strong religious background or understanding of religion. I figured that college is a time to broaden one’s horizons, and it is a very present part of the world. We started with a book called God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now. The author, John Crossan, is arguing that the Bible depicts Jesus as a teacher of nonviolent practices, but the formation of civilization adopted violent methods instead. It describes the violence within the Roman Empire, comparing it to America today, the New Roman Empire. It continues to analyze in detail many different parts of the Bible that support and contradict the argument of the nonviolence of Christianity. This weekend, we had to read 150 painful pages and write a two page paper for Monday, which we will repeat again for Wednesday. It’s been very difficult, and as I am lacking a Christian background, I find myself Googling every Biblical reference, which takes time. I considered dropping the class, but I am trying to keep in mind the reasons I am taking it. I hope to gain a greater depth of understanding for religion in my life.
Yes, it’s been a few weeks since I blogged. I had the best intentions, but the last few weeks of summer ended as a blur. My amazing summer of independence, living on my own in Columbus, disappeared as quickly as it began. I headed home and crammed in a week of quality time with my mom and extended family. Essentially, it was how I had spent my last two summers, but packed into one week and a bit more celebratory. I headed back to OSU and moved all my stuff back into Bradley Hall for RA Training. Our staff unexpectedly doubled in size and we were flexible with the change. This meant I would be able to work with some of my closest friends in Paterson Hall, the other building that makes up the BP Complex which split up at the end of the summer but then reunited, and meet lots of new people, not to mention work with the Pharmacy Scholars Learning Community that is housed in Paterson. Training as a returner provides an incredible opportunity to develop leadership skills, particularly with our Hall Director and Assistant Hall Director being new to OSU Student Life. I celebrated my 21st birthday and got ready for Move-In Day, which was a blast. And now school has started and I’m frantically doing homework and getting to know my residents and planning programs and working my internship and getting back into the social scene of OSU and simply surviving. This last month flew, but it’s my favorite time of year. It’s also the most stressful. Hopefully I can find a balance between the relaxing self-fulfillment of summer and the crazy OSU lifestyle I love so much.
I declared my Political Science minor this week, since I was finishing my Honors contract. I have only taken one Political Science class, which was PS 501 The American Presidency (which I highly recommend, by the way), although I have taken many politically-oriented classes. There are a number of PS Minor focuses and a General Political Science minor. I told my advisor I had just taken a general class, but I was really interested in international politics. He said general was the way to go because it’s so flexible. I basically could pick any classes I wanted. This fall I will be taking Foreign Policy Decision Making, per his recommendation. I am also planning on taking Government and Politics of China, and the rest is sort of up in the air. I’m getting very excited to take these classes, though. I’m finishing up my GEC’s and almost my whole Communication major this year, so it will be a big chunk of next year, but I think it will be a great opportunity. I can’t believe I am already planning my final year of classes!
I am just finishing up my Honors contract. Essentially, it is a contract saying what classes you plan on taking for the rest of college that has to be approved by a committee. You make a rough draft of this when you first enter the Honors program, but by your junior year the “official” one has to be approved. Needless to say, I’ve been freaking out about this all summer. I finally met with my advisors…you meet with and get approval from any major and minor advisors you have and your school’s Honors advisor before even submitting it to the committee. However, they told me what everyone else has been telling me…that I can always change my mind. It’s kind of a big paperwork-filled process to change the contract, but who isn’t going to change their mind as to what classes they take? So basically they had me pick any class that looked good for now and I could tweak it later. Each meeting took about 10 minutes. And seriously, I’ve been freaking out about this for about a year. Ah well, no harm done! Just another example of how everything works itself out.
Nothing like living on your own to teach you the value of a dollar. I’m really starting to feel the fact that I quit the OSU Calling job as far as my wallet goes. I recently paid my last rent, which was $400 a month. I spend about $50 a week on groceries. I buy a lot of fruits and vegetables, so I have to go every week because that’s usually how long they last. It’s also more expensive, which is the price one pays to live a healthier lifestyle. It makes a student miss being on the meal plan. I also go out to eat at least once a week, and that often goes along with seeing a movie or shopping with friends…more expenses. Without a car, I don’t have to worry about gas, but I do try to give gas money to anyone who drives me anywhere. Plus I’m getting ready to make all my big purchases for the new school year, like a futon, books, and a printer. I feel like I’m spending my money faster than I can make it. I am looking forward to the steady paycheck of the RA job and the consistency of a cafeteria in my basement where I simply swipe for food. It just seems so much simpler! I really need to save up my paychecks this year so I don’t have to worry as much next summer. But that never seems to work out as planned, does it?
I’ve been working on some ideas for my floor for next year, as far as door decs and bulletin boards go (partly out of excitement for the year, partly out of boredom from the summer/work). I thought I’d throw a few of them out here and see if I get any feedback or other ideas. An ongoing program I’ve been thinking about is having a cultural dinner every month, where we would pick a country or culture and have a bunch of food from that area and maybe some sort of craft or lesson about it as well. This has worked well in the past with Mediterranean or Israeli programs, and residents really seem to benefit from it.
For my first 2 bulletin boards, I’m planning on doing a “Where in the World in Everybody From” again, with a map of Ohio, the US, and the world showing where everyone is from on the floor. I think it is also important to have a board when the year starts showing resources available. I thought it might be more creative this year if I did “Meredith’s Top Five”, for example my top five places to study, eat, hang out, etc.
Last year for door decs I did paper envelopes that people could put notes in. This went over okay, and I like interactive decorations. I was thinking maybe little boxes though…ResidentAssistant.com suggested Chinese take-out boxes.
Now all I need to do is start working on all of this now before training in a month!
Last week, the Buckeye bloggers were invited, along with all the bloggers of Columbus, to an event at Experience Columbus, which is the visitor’s center downtown. They were announcing the new ad campaign for the city, and they wanted the blogging community to be the first to report it, which is an interesting concept. The idea is they’re starting with something negative that Columbus lacks, like a video showing someone struggling through a swim on the English Channel saying “You can’t swim through the English Channel in Columbus”, or a shirt with a picture of Sasquatch that reads “I didn’t catch Sasquatch in Columbus,” and each negative statement ends with something like “But you can do everything else”. The blogger community had some feedback, and many weren’t sure about starting with the negative and about what audience this was to be marketed to. I thought it would be good for the OSU student audience, because it includes a really strange website that hasn’t been launched yet, but when I brought that point up, no one seemed to care about that audience. Which is a mistake, by the way…although Experience Columbus has a presence on campus, people rarely use their current website. Yet students love spending money in Columbus, and every year a new group of first-time Columbus residents goes back to their families in Cincinnati or Cleveland (Columbus’s competition), and tells them about this great city in Ohio. The students are an untapped resource, and should be considered in this campaign. We’ll see in the coming months what effect this campaign will have on Columbus.
No major updates right now, except we just hit the halway point of summer (I’m counting the end of summer as the start of RA Training on September 5th, not the September 24th start of school). We’re also at the point where our peers at other colleges are preparing to go back, and I’m about ready to go back with them. We’ve had six weeks off, and it’s just starting to get slightly boring and repetitive. I know I should be careful what I wish for, but if I had to go back to school next week I wouldn’t mind. However, I try to remember how grateful I am for this break from classes and especially the RA job. I’ve been using this time for some self-improvement and just doing some things for myself…plus getting out of the dorms for a little bit has actually given me the chance to meet some really amazing people (usually it’s the other way around…maybe it’s just getting out of the RA position for a bit). For now, I guess I will just have to be patient and try to keep things interesting…I know once I’m emersed in constant RA training, as much as I really do love it, part of me will be longing for these lazy crazy days!
Ok, so spontaneous Dallas trip…
Last Monday the 21st, I happily quit my OSU Calling job…I decided I was going to just work my internship and have some good old college fun for the rest of the summer until RA Training. The next day, one of my former roommate came over…she had purchased plane tickets months ago to go visit our other old roommate who lives in Dallas…she had invited me but at the time I said no because I didn’t want to waste the time or the money. But that night, she was just commenting on how she had found some reasonably priced flights online that day that she was comparing to her ticket price, and I pretty much said, “I could do that.” So we had dinner and thought it over…and then we came back and the tickets were about $50 more expensive. It was now or never. The flight was leaving the next day, and it was the Hotwire website, so the flights are inexpensive but you don’t actually find out what time your flight is leaving until you actually pay and it’s too late to back out…and it could be as early as 6 am. I called Hotwire begging them to tell me the time the plane left….after all, I had my internship to consider…but they couldn’t. So I just went for it.
My flight ended up leaving a 2:30 pm. That was workable. I came in for my internship for about an hour, and tried my best to explain the situation to my boss, without exaggerating the truth too much. It didn’t go over too badly, so I was on my way to spend a week in Texas.
Spontaneous? Absolutely. But the best worst decision I ever made. It was such a blast…when I remember how to do pictures on here I will put the pictures up, because they really show the experience…it’s actually a very different environment than I’m used to in many ways. And it has only made me want to travel farther and see new and different places even more.
Here's my second feature for the magazine at my internship, and my personal favorite:
At Harvard University, 1,300 students were screened for depression and anxiety in one night at dining halls around campus. Coordinated by peer student groups, the screenings identified upwards of 200 students who met the criteria for these disorders, leading to more 40 new referrals to mental health services. But the screening did more than just that for the campus; it also prompted a conversation among students about mental health.
As efforts are being made to reduce the stigma of mental health issues, the face of mental health care is changing on campuses worldwide. “In the last ten years, we’ve doubled the number of clients we see and doubled the number of visits,” says Dr. Greg Eells, associate director of counseling and psychological services at Cornell University in New York. “It seems to be a national trend.”
In addition to the increase of mental health problems, higher education professionals have also reassessed mental health procedures in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, along with subsequent shootings at Delaware State University in Dover, Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge, and Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. The question of “Could this happen to us?” has registered on the radar of many campuses, causing institutions to evaluate their preparedness to respond to emergencies.
The Midwestern Higher Education Compact, a non-profit organization that assists Midwestern states in advancing higher education through interstate cooperation and resource sharing, conducted a study in March 2008 of 331 two- and four-year campuses. The study, “The Ripple Effect of Virginia Tech: Assessing the Nationwide Impact on Campus Safety and Security Policy and Practice,” finds that 87 percent of these institutions reviewed their safety policies and procedures following the Virginia Tech shootings, and nine in ten made changes of some kind. Colleges and universities are considering privacy laws and communication practices with a new perspective, realizing that the cost of unpreparedness may be greater than once thought.
Connecting the Dots
Immediately following the Virginia Tech shootings, Governor Tim Kaine appointed a panel to review the case of gunman Seung Hui Cho and the events leading up to the tragedy. The Virginia Tech Review Panel reported that school officials “explained their failures to communicate with one another or Cho’s parents by noting their belief that such communications were prohibited by the federal laws governing the privacy of health and education records.”
These privacy laws refer to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), both policies with which misconceptions run high in the world of higher education. FERPA protects the privacy of students’ educational records from parents, but does allow the sharing of personal observations, and releasing information to “appropriate” school officials, defined at the discretion of the school. HIPAA, not exclusive to colleges and universities, establishes privacy standards regarding the electronic exchange of health information. The report found that although many departments and individuals were aware of warning signs in Cho, “no one knew all the information and no one connected all the dots.”
Colleges and universities are heeding the recommendations made by this report and using these findings to reevaluate their understandings of FERPA and HIPAA. Lisa Trahan, dean of the first year experience at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, says that this has allowed student affairs professionals to be educated on privacy policies. “If there was someone who’s health and safety was in jeopardy, you need to do what is right by that person, and FERPA is loose enough to allow that. People can’t hide behind FERPA as much [since Virginia Tech]. It’s forced people to gain a better understanding and appreciation and closeness with FERPA.”
“The Ripple Effect of Virginia Tech” found that more than half of the institutions had reviewed their policies under FERPA post Virginia Tech, and about a quarter of those said they had changed how they carry out FERPA and communicate student information. Dr. Eells observed these alterations as effective in improving safety. “Prior to Virginia Tech, there was a lot of misunderstanding on what the restrictions of FERPA were. Since Virginia Tech, if anyone has any major concerns about safety that they communicate to someone, there won’t be consequences from FERPA. You can communicate information if that will be helpful.”
Compared to FERPA, HIPAA follows a more complex consent system and has enforced consequences for violations, making it less open to interpretation than FERPA. Jim Rooney, associate director of housing and director of residential life at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, finds that unlike FERPA, the restrictions of HIPAA cannot be redefined. “HIPAA is clearer and more directed than FERPA is, putting our medical staff is at a greater disadvantage.”
In response to these policy evaluations, lines of communication between college and university departments have strengthened in the past year. “The Ripple Effect of Virginia Tech” found that 65% of respondents had a “care team” or similar group of faculty and/or staff that meets regularly to discuss troubled and potentially troubled students.
The University of Wisconsin in Madison is an example; their Interdisciplinary Team, or “I-Team”, consists of the housing department, the university police, the dean of students, counseling services, and the disability office, and meets every two weeks to share information and see if particular students are experiencing issues within a variety of departments. In response to Virginia Tech, Wisconsin also added the Threat Assessment Response Team, including legal services, to assess if there is an indication of threat to anyone on campus.
Harvard University builds relationships between departments with their Administrative Board, which meets for two to three hours a week. They also assign liaisons from the counseling department to housing, and they incorporate mental health training in the halls. “We have very open communication between our college and our programs,” says Paul Barreira, director of behavioral health and academic counseling at Harvard College. “Once you start doing these things, it builds community and starts conversation.”
A similar group of departments, the Intervention Team, meets weekly at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to identify trends. In collaboration with this, they can log academic or behavioral concerns on a Web site in order to make the appropriate referrals for students.
All these institutions, however, stressed that information goes out only on a need-to-know basis, which may not include parents. Barreira acknowledges that although they cannot call parents in most situations, “we look to parents as another resource to help students be successful. We have a more qualitative assessment of what’s going on in the student’s life and we assess whether a conversation with parents would be helpful or necessary. One challenge is making sure we do connect the dots with who needs to know.”
In the Event of an Emergency
Another criticism given by the review panel about Virginia Tech was that university administrators failed to issue an all-campus notification until almost two hours after the event elapsed. “The Ripple Effect of Virginia Tech” reported that the biggest change on college campuses was the inclusion of emergency alert systems via text messages and other mobile communication devices. Over 75 percent of institutions indicated that they planned to acquire the technology or had already implemented systems since April 2007. However, telecommunications companies require their subscribers to manually opt in to any mass alert service due to privacy reasons, and getting students to do so creates some difficulty for administrators.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is in the midst of plans for an emergency notification system, and Trahan finds combating this obstacle as an ideal opportunity to involve parents. ”Our plan is to talk to parents at orientation and make it part of the registration process. It will be voluntary, but we will provide a process to make it easy.”
With student privacy rights on the table for debate, institutions are careful not to go overboard. More than half of surveyed colleges and universities had considered installing metal detectors, and nearly half had considered installing closed circuit cameras in classrooms, but most of these institutions eventually rejected the implementations. Similar outcomes surfaced regarding background checks and admissions policies. Dr. Eells agrees that professionals must prioritize the success of students rather than focus excessively on the unlikely crisis. “From a statistical standpoint, things like threat assessments will have false positives. The real risk isn’t there.”
No matter how institutions have handled privacy and emergency procedures in the aftermath of recent school shootings, higher education professionals across the board agree that building the lines of communication is essential. Mental health issues manifest in all the aspects of student life, including academic, social, and emotional. In communicating information appropriately and identifying trends across the departments, student affairs professionals will be better able to provide for the mental health needs of students.
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