… writing from a Brown University student, as he struggles with his sense of implication in the suicide of an NYU student he didn’t know.
In places this opinion piece gets too highfalutin. But who cares. It’s that rare bit of writing which sheds protective covering and just says it.
With full awareness of the mystery of the act in general, and his distance from this person in particular, the Brown student makes two suggestions:
… The first line of business I’d proffer would be Brown’s departure from the heinously overrated U.S. News and World Report rankings, with a clear statement from President Ruth Simmons that Brown is withdrawing to fight the elitism of Ivy academia. Expressing to the general public that higher education is not about exclusion would reshape the expectations of parents and students, almost certainly alleviating academic pressure.
Another measure would be an encouragement of student-faculty relationships. Bringing undergraduates closer to professors would assist in augmenting self-confidence and inclusion. My thinking is faculty dinners and coffee dates funded by the University (I do know that Brown-RISD Hillel has begun something like this through Shabbat dinners). In these more intimate settings, we can emphasize community…
Although I think the student’s right that isolation and pressure play into some university suicides, I don’t think statistics support the idea that there’s something special about the Ivies, and similar places, like NYU. The two most recent student suicides both happened at St. Cloud State University. It’s true that Caltech has had three suicides in the last few months, all Asian-American males; but my sense of the situation, from covering these events for many years, is that a feeling of intense academic and social pressure can be experienced on any campus.
The faculty-student relationships idea seems to me a good one; it’s likely that greater warmth from professors would make students happier and give them a boost. But administrators have lots of worries about inappropriate closeness; the writer’s language (“intimate settings”) might well scare them. And professors worry about fairness. If I take this bright, fascinating, charming, student in my class out to lunch, will it seem favoritism …?
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:27AM
"The faculty-student relationships idea seems to me a good one"
Hmm..
When I was an undergrad-
The regular faculty were TA’s in one of my survey courses.
I had an advisor. Not only did he know my name, we often talked. If I wanted to drop a course he had to sign off on it.
Now-
My undergrads have an advisor who handles about one thousand undergrads. There is no personal relationship.
This could and should be fixed.
November 23rd, 2009 at 12:43PM
And yet…
My greatest disappointment as a faculty member is how few students seek out advising. Both when my signature was required on paperwork and now, when we have an outstanding professional adviser who handles the e-work, under 5 percent of my advisees ever sought REAL consultation and 99% of scheduled office hours went unused.
And I make much more effort than the average, I think. I email all my advisees each semester and let them know not only when I am available, but how important I think it is and how much I enjoy it and welcome their questions. I give them not just phone, cell and email, but IM contact info, and tell them it’s Ok to use any of those for any reason. A few times a semester, I’ll send them something I saw on career or graduate school advice that I thought would be helpful. Yet, the contacts are few and far between.
I’m not sure why that’s the case, but in my experience, providing the resources is not the silver bullet. There’s something about the way students are socialized into university life that inhibits this important relationship.
November 24th, 2009 at 11:39AM
I attended an Ivy university, and more recently my daughter has attended two. I’ve also had experience with other institutions. My strong impression is that there’s less competitive pressure at the Ivies — once you’re in — than at top engineering schools or very good but somewhat less prestigious/selective schools. For one thing, if you graduate from, say, Yale, you’re going to get into medical school (or whatever). Of course the students got there by being competitive, and sometimes because of parental expectations, but the Ivies’ admission policies have historically been designed to filter out the nutcases (unless they grew up on isolated ranches in the Mountain time zone).
There could be less pressure, though. Some Ivies unduly restrict enrollment in undergraduate honors programs, which mean students have to compete for something they could have had readily had they attend "lesser" schools. This is simply crazy.