As the COVID-19 vaccine rollout continues, many college students are hoping for a return to normalcy in the coming academic year. Higher education leaders have promised to do what they can to promote such a return but assert that priority must be given to safety and vulnerable student support.
Lynn C. Pasquerella, PhD, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU), says that the greatest concern for campus leaders right now is ensuring that students and employees are safe going into the fall semester.
“This is at the forefront of their minds, how to open in the fall, whether it should be face-to-face or hybrid or virtual and, of course, whether to mandate the vaccine,” she says.
The AACU, which has a membership of more than 1,200 higher education institutions, facilitates ongoing conversations around this issue through forums, webinars, institutes, and conferences. Pasquerella says that fear of a possible resurgence in COVID-19 or one of its variants should campuses be too swift in reopening is a topic that comes up every day.
Though a small but growing number of universities have already pledged to require students, and in some cases employees, to be vaccinated by the fall, it is unlikely that public institutions in Republican-controlled states will be able to institute such a mandate, according to Pasquerella. Governors in Florida, Missouri, and other conservative states have already outright banned colleges and businesses from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations or have indicated that they plan to do so in the near future.
Some higher education institutions are considering using disincentives, such as prohibiting the use of campus shuttles or attendance at athletic events, for students who do not get the vaccine, but actually enforcing these rules could be a “logistical nightmare,” Pasquerella says.
For many low-income and underrepresented students, reopening safely is an issue of equity. The same students who most need access to on-campus resources, such as academic support services or housing, are also the ones who will be disproportionately affected if they have to worry about possibly contracting COVID-19 on campus and inadvertently spreading it to others, even if they themselves are vaccinated.
“You can’t focus on your studies if you’re worried about where your next meal is going to come from or if you’re living in your car or are worried about anti-Black sentiment at campus orientation and now having to worry about getting infected or infecting loved ones,” Pasquerella explains. “So the plans to have a safe learning environment that might involve mandating a vaccine are directly related to student success and the capacity to learn in an environment where you don’t have to worry if the person next to you might not be vaccinated or is not wearing a mask or has not been social distancing.”
Ensuring that campuses are taking as many precautions as possible may be one way to entice students who dropped out during the pandemic to reenroll. In fall 2020 alone, anywhere from 7.7 million to 10 million students cancelled plans to attend college, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Underrepresented students have been significantly more likely to cancel enrollment or to drop out of degree programs throughout the course of the pandemic. Freshmen from low-income backgrounds have seen some of the greatest drops, and experts are worried that this trend could continue into the 2021-2022 academic year.
Research has long shown that people who defer plans for higher education rarely return after they enter the workforce, leading experts like Pasquerella to worry that these people could become “a lost generation,” she says.
Despite the dire outlook, advocates say that the current moment stands as a prime opportunity to reform the culture of higher education toward one that is more focused on supporting vulnerable students and overall student well-being. The AACU and other education groups are pushing for the federal government to ease the path to degree attainment for disadvantaged students by instituting education loan forgiveness and doubling Pell Grant funding as well as expanding internship and work-study opportunities.
They are also advocating for colleges and lawmakers to recognize mental health support as a necessary component of success. Multiple sources of research show that young people have experienced greater rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation during the pandemic. Furthermore, experts predict that
many people could experience social anxiety and other negative effects as safety measures are lifted. These factors will compound the mental health crisis that already existed among college students prior to the pandemic.
One of the most fundamental changes that colleges can make going into the fall semester is promoting the belief that the entire campus community is responsible for student mental health and overall well-being, says David Arnold, assistant vice president for Health, Safety, and Well-being Initiatives at NASPA – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.
“Student mental health and student safety [are] something that we all play a role in and have some responsibility for,” Arnold says. “One of the growing concerns before COVID and one that will continue during reopening is the isolation in which mental health services are offered and a belief that faculty, for example, can’t provide any sort of intervention, but it’s part of their job to form relationships with students, offer office hours, and make connections.”
Faculty and staff oftentimes think they are unqualified or that it is not in their purview to get involved with student mental health, but there are plenty of ways to promote student well-being that do not require clinical expertise, Arnold explains. Raising awareness of resources or knowing how to support those who are distressed are simple factors that help to create a community of care, which is especially important for students of color going into the fall 2021 semester.
“We have a dual pandemic to consider, and it’s not just COVID but also the significant amount of media attention that racial justice issues have played out in the media and in our lives,” says Arnold. “If a university says that it’s concerned with mental health but not concerned about being a racial justice [advocacy] institution, that’s a huge problem because the mental health outcomes for students of color are directly impacted by the way in which the university is trying to [address] racial justice with its students, faculty, staff, and community.”
Pasquerella agrees that colleges must train faculty and staff to recognize psychological distress in students and to understand appropriate interventions. Higher education has proven adaptable to this during the pandemic as many institutions found innovative ways to offer virtual mental health support. Being on campus will provide even more opportunities to promote overall student wellness, she says.
“In the spring many campuses were canceling their spring breaks, but they recognized the need for students to have a mental break from their stress, so they hosted wellness days with fun activities,” says Pasquerella. “I think we’ll see a lot more of that interspersed through the academic year as colleges recognize that the pandemic has taken a mental toll we didn’t anticipate.”
Mariah Bohanon is the senior editor of INSIGHT Into Diversity.
![One day after the mass shooting incident at Michigan State University in February, a University of Florida (UF) student called the UF Police Department (UFPD) concerned about a classmate who was researching guns and ammunition. Instead of just police responding to the call, a trained behavioral health specialist was also dispatched. “Our clinicians and officers spent three hours with that person to really flesh out why he was searching what he was searching,” says Meggen Sixbey, PhD, assistant director of the Behavioral Services Division of UFPD and a co-responder. “Do we have evidence to be concerned? In those three hours with him, they learned that he was in fear of his own safety [due to] things that were going on in his own life.” Without UF’s co-responder approach, Sixbey says, the situation could have escalated quickly or ended differently, and the student may not have received appropriate help. Due to widespread concern around mental health and fears of escalation caused by law enforcement response, partnerships between police and behavioral health specialists are growing across higher education campuses. Experts see this collaboration as a way to aid the most vulnerable by connecting them with needed resources and support. Collaborations differ campus to campus based on institutional needs. While some new programs, like the one at UF, dispatch counselors directly to the scene with police officers, others do not involve immediate on-site clinician response to dispatch situations. The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, for example, works with both municipal and campus police to provide mental health support services to students, all of whom live off campus. University case managers help officers on the scene when there is no perceived imminent danger. Additional support is provided by the Campus Assessment, Response & Evaluation (CARE) Team, which is a common type of program at colleges and universities. The goal is to reach students before their situation becomes critical. The CARE Team reviews referrals for urgent mental health support among students and connects them to campus resources such as case management and additional counseling services. When assessing a threat, each situation is evaluated based on the NABITA Risk Rubric, a tool used in triaging mental health concerns with an interdisciplinary team approach, says Jan Gascoigne, PhD, associate vice chancellor for student affairs, and associate clinical professor. “Often the situation is determined not to be a threat but really just someone who is struggling and needs help,” she says. “We’d rather try to work with that person, figure out what’s going on, and get them the help they need without having to escalate to a police intervention. Our campus police have the same philosophy.” New programs expand mental health services in dispatch situations, with projects being introduced at Johns Hopkins University, The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Oregon, Colorado State University, and California State University, Long Beach. During a six-month trial in the city of Denver, in which mental health specialists were paired with police to respond to calls involving trespassing and other nonviolent events, a 34 percent drop in crimes was reported, or approximately 1,400 fewer criminal offenses, according to the Stanford University report “A Community Response Approach to Mental Health and Substance Abuse Crises Reduced Crime,” published last year. UF’s program launched in July and is the first in the nation led by a campus police department, Sixbey says. Calls are answered by UFPD, which contacts clinicians when there is a mental health component. Situations might include, for example, a student who threatens suicide, someone who was just fired from their job, or an individual whose property was stolen. It’s essential to decriminalize mental health, or mitigate criminal offenses in such calls, Sixbey says. It’s also important to de-escalate situations with clinically trained professionals to help reduce hospitalizations, which are often traumatic, she says. The UF team is looking for more effective ways to enhance efforts to assist underrepresented individuals because the relationship between these communities and law enforcement has historically been strained, a circumstance highlighted by recent social justice activism and political attention paid to policing. In addition to a campus climate survey, UF is conducting focus groups to see how underrepresented communities on campus view the program. Preliminary feedback points to possible changes in police uniforms, where officers would wear a pin or patch to identify themselves as Crisis Intervention Team trained, which means they have received mental health instruction to guide interactions. Individuals surveyed also showed interest in making the clinician the lead responder instead of an officer. This model was used successfully a couple of months ago, Sixbey says. A faculty member of color called regarding a Black student who made a concerning statement about suicide and left the classroom abruptly. The caller didn’t want police to go to the student’s home because they were aware he had experienced past interactions with law enforcement, but the caller still felt a wellness check was warranted. Based on the information provided, the clinician was able to strategize and lead the interaction. They found that the fears the instructor had regarding the student’s mental health were not present and that he was thankful for the tailored response. “Why a program like this is so beneficial, especially to underrepresented populations, is simply because it provides an additional resource which is an alternative to law enforcement response,” Sixbey says. “Even the best law enforcement officer with an abundance of mental health and crisis intervention team training is still an officer. When you can bring a mental health worker to the scene, it can shift the dynamic and allow for a noncriminal approach to a noncriminal matter.”](https://www.insightintodiversity.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Crisis-Response-1-218x150.png "Counselor-Police Response Partnerships Benefit Students in Crisis")
