campus crime and mental health of higher education students

Imagine that you are the President of a small urban university. The area around the university has a high crime rate, but until recently crime has not been a problem on campus. This semester, however, has been a difficult one for students, parents, faculty, and staff. As the semester began, several students were mugged. The muggings happened off-campus, but only two blocks away from campus. A student fight in the residence halls during the first month of school resulted in a student being stabbed with a pocket knife. Finally, at about 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday night in October, a student was shot outside the Student Union. This shooting was the result of a robbery. Apparently, a group of men followed the student from off-campus and then robbed and shot the student while a party was going on inside the Student Union.

The campus crisis management team dealt with each incident individually, but the summary of events has left students, faculty, and staff feeling unsafe on campus. You have received calls from parents who are demanding answers about how you can keep students safer; some are even threatening to pull their students out of school.

You have scheduled a campus-wide meeting for this evening to discuss safety issues. At this meeting you will reveal your immediate (what you will do tomorrow and within the coming weeks), short-term (in the next 6 months), and long-term (next few years) plans to improve campus safety. Remember that your plans need to address ways to help students feel safer immediately.

In your response for Case Study #1, address the plans that you have for safety on campus and provide the following within your post:

Reveal your immediate, short-term, and long-term plans. Your plans should address broad actions to take, specific steps and timelines, lists of roles and responsibilities, campus departments involved, and other pertinent information.

Remember that the plan is being addressed to the campus-wide community and it is likely to become public knowledge.

After you have posted your information, be sure to respond to the plans of your classmates. This is a good opportunity to build on each other’s plans, make suggestions, and offer constructive criticism.

Case Study #2

In addition to campus crime, which you explored in Part 1 of the Discussion, many institutions are being overwhelmed with student mental health issues. In the Case Study #2 Discussion, you will turn your focus to dealing with the increased funding requests so colleges and universities can provide the services students need.

In Unit 1, you discussed the rising costs of colleges, including the fact that while tuition continues to rise, most departments within a college or university have had to cut costs each year over the past several years. In this unit, you read about a recent trend affecting many campuses: an increasing number of students are coming to campus with mental health issues. Counseling centers and medical clinics are overwhelmed. Funding agencies, like state legislatures, are debating requests from higher education for additional resources to meet this challenge.

In your post discuss the following:

Should colleges invest more money in counseling and mental health services? If yes, where should that money come from? If no, where should the students get the help they need?

Imagine that you are an aide to an influential legislator in your state. She sits on the Finance Committee, which recommends funding levels to the rest of the legislature. Part of your job is to prepare position papers or talking points that the legislator uses to advocate her position on requests for funding. You have been asked to develop such a discussion as a result of a request from the state university system for increased funding for mental health issues.

If your first name begins with A through L, your legislator’s position opposes funding for mental health services on campus. If your first name begins with M through Z, your legislator supports increased funding for mental health services.

Prepare a justification that your legislator can use to support her stance for or against investing more money in mental health services.