The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/cornell-mental-health/)
Former Women’s National Basketball Association player Imani McGee-Stafford and podcaster Cameron Rogers were guests at the Women’s Resource Center’s inaugural REALtalk speaker series event.
It’s the psych ward. There’s no way out of it. No one wants to be there. I’m not in any way glamorizing suicide and hospitalization. I just want people to know that it’s not as scary and stigmatized as people make it out to be.
Furthermore, the role of privilege is also evident when it comes to mental health care on campus; it’s not only prevalent in college admissions and the culture of attending an Ivy League school. One of Cornell’s Mental Health Initiatives includes their Fall 2020 Mental Health and Well Being Survey. Regarding mental health disparities, students of color, those who identify as a gender out of the binary or as transgender and those whose sexual orientation doesn’t fit societal norms struggle the most.
Throughout all these crises, the idea of being “the campus on the hill,” separate and safe from the dangers of the rest of the world, seemed to many students as a farce. It would appear as though Cornell doesn’t address the student deaths as a collective event that continuously impacts the student body morale; the numbers of lost students have not been made readily accessible to the public prior to Do Better Cornell’s statement, which only adds to the atmosphere of secrecy and fear. Throughout all these examples of anxiety-inducing events, there has existed a surreal amount of dissonance between the Cornell administration’s attitudes, those of its faculty and those of its students.
Sickness is one of the many afflictions that may strike a student and it doesn’t get a lot of sympathy. My first year, I caught the flu and developed a fever so bad it landed me in an ambulance on the way to Cayuga Med. All I remember was being grateful it happened on a Saturday, and that I was back in class the following Monday. This lack of sympathy stems from the fact that almost every student is in some stage of sickness right now, be it the “I think I’m starting to get sick” phase or the “I think I might finally be better now” phase. Mental health is a whole other can of worms.
Content Warning: This article contains mentions of depression and suicide.
It seems like everyone you know is “dying.” Not literally in terms of heartbeat and body temperature. No, it’s when you ask them how they’re doing, and they tend to reply, “I’m dying,” “terribly” or with one of those sardonic smiles and tilted heads as they pantomime a noose around their necks. There are people who are genuinely doing well. They’re well adjusted, healthy, probably out running six miles a day, chugging vegan smoothies and holding hands with Martha Pollack somewhere. They do exist … And yet when you talk with any of your peers here and ask them how they’re doing, it seems most of them are unhappy and quick to tell you so.
A pair of headphones, earbuds or — dare I say it — AirPods fall into the same level of necessity as backpacks when it comes to college student essentials. There’s nothing quite like the drop in my stomach when I realize that I left my headphones in my dorm, doomed to a day without music to get me through my walks across campus and those awkward interactions I’d rather avoid by jamming out to Frank Ocean. Headphones even got an honorable mention in Martha Pollack’s New Student Convocation last semester for their widespread use around campus. The science regarding music and mental health isn’t fully conclusive, but there is some evidence linking music with positive health outcomes. Anecdotally, I know what I’m listening to deeply impacts (and is impacted by) my mental health.
You go downstairs to get your clothing out of the dryer. You open it up to find that every article of clothing is still soaking wet. You mutter a seven letter word which my editor won’t let me print. You take out all of your clothing and transfer it to another machine which will hopefully work. You swipe your card and pay another dollar whatever to the ghost of Ezra Cornell.
Floods, famine, power-hungry villains, war . . . all the makings of an apocalypse movie. Except, this isn’t fiction; it’s the narrative that environment and sustainability and other majors can begin to feel is unavoidable when faced with teachings about the dangers of climate change on a near daily basis.
My eyes glazed over the platitudes typed on the glossy notecards I was organizing during a guest-led advising seminar session. “Get good sleep.” “Have fun.” “Practice mindfulness.” Sounds like the perfect plan for a productive college career. Just one tiny question: How do I manage all those things with impending prelims and essay deadlines? The question lodged itself in my throat as I glanced at the mental health resources listed on a notecard — the same list I’d seen in every community email. In theory, the College of Arts and Sciences advising seminar is a great idea.