Running a college or university is one tough job. Picture all the constituencies to satisfy: Students. Faculty. Staff. Alumni. Parents. Coaches. Donors. Trustees. The UNC Board of Governors. Legislators.
It’s a juggling act even on a normal day – whatever ‘normal’ means these days.
Now add a global pandemic involving a highly contagious virus for which there’s no vaccine. And a healthy dose of political tension in the air as well.
Some seemed to think administrators had a ready-made plan to shift courses online. But there’s no handbook for how to run a university filled with social creatures in the midst of a pandemic.
Sure, we know the science tells us to wear masks, wait six feet apart and wash our hands. But when you attempt to apply that science to human behavior – whether that human is 5 years old or 19 – it becomes much more complex.
Consider university chancellors as they’ve weighed how to return to campus this fall and next spring: They’re caught between students and parents who prefer in-person instruction, faculty largely from an older age group who are reluctant, and political bodies that expect a full reopening.
There’s no way to keep everyone happy in such a situation. There’s no right answer. Yet from the outset, faculty and others have second-guessed administrators.
Running a major university might be the toughest job in America today. Some say decisions are driven too much by money. Clearly revenue is one factor, but administrators are trying to do what’s right while weighing many competing factors. And health and safety are clearly at the top of their list.
Likewise, some administrators have blamed students for flouting the rules and the pledges they signed to abide by them.
This at what is generally considered the least risk-averse period of a person’s life.
“Most types of risky behavior – reckless driving, criminal activity, fighting, unsafe sex and binge drinking, to name just a few – peak during the late teens and early 20s,” psychology professor Laurence Steinberg wrote in June in The New York Times.1
In other words, there’s a reason auto-insurance rates drop when a driver turns 25.
We all are experiencing stress – acknowledged or not – in our seventh month of restrictions to limit spread of the virus.
That includes students. A survey at UNC-Chapel Hill by Associate Professor Jane Cooley-Fruehwirth revealed a sharp increase in mental-health needs among students who started in the fall of 2019.
“The survey found that, four months into COVID-19, one-quarter of the students reported that they were suffering from anxiety and one-third from depression,” Board of Governors member Carolyn Coward told the board last month. “This marks a 40% increase over last fall for anxiety and a 48% increase for depression.”
The study found that stress was even more pronounced among students of color: In June, 61% of Black students reported symptoms of depression – nearly twice as many as pre-COVID.
Yet when most students moved home after the campus shifted to all-online instruction, it became harder for them to go to a student counseling center.
“There is evidence that a lower percentage of students with symptoms are getting treatment than pre-pandemic,” Coward said.2
A Board of Governors committee chaired by Coward has discussed student mental-health needs since July. The board adopted a resolution last month to study services at every UNC System campus and assess needs, funding and how to provide services to students even if they aren’t on campus.3
These days it seems we all deserve a little more patience with each other. A little more listening. And a lot less finger-pointing.
1 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/opinion/coronavirus-college-safe.html.
2 https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/pandemic-adds-to-stress-anxiety-of-unc-students-study-finds/19291954/.
3 https://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/doc.php?id=64721&code=bog, pp. 3-4, 6-7.
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