Photo: “Stress” by Andrew Imanaka via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).
Among an increasingly large epidemic of mental health issues among American adolescents, many institutions, including West Chester, are taking stock of their counseling resources and assessing whether their facilities can keep up with the growing numbers of students that reach out for help. For most, this means hiring more staff, connecting students better with group counseling and outside resources and generally making it easier to talk about and get the assistance that students might need with depression, anxiety and other issues.
For Pennsylvania’s largest community college however, the solution wasn’t to put more into counseling programs, but rather to cut them entirely: leaving their 19,000 students with no counseling resources.
In an effort to close a massive university deficit following a shrinking enrollment, Harrisburg Area Community College began to phase out all university run individual and group counseling services earlier this fall. The decision, made as part of a series of budget cuts and restructuring, was not made public or announced to students. Only after an internal memo was intercepted by Spotlight PA and an article was published about the cuts did students mobilize to protest the university’s quiet elimination of counseling services. The elimination of services was also done against the advice of student health professionals, who advocated for college-run counseling in an era where suicide is the second leading cause of death among young adults. In recent weeks, the student-run protests have grown, drawing state-wide attention to HACC and the conversation its students are opening about what gets funded and why.
For Pennsylvania’s largest community college, however, the solution wasn’t to put more into counseling programs, but rather to cut them entirely, leaving their 19,000 students with no counseling resources.
Protesters have pointed out the inconsistency in HACC’s priorities, as the college recently completed a $12 million renovation of its student center. Students accused the college of valuing its image over the wellbeing of its students, as many are forced to discontinue treatment for depression, stress and anxiety. HACC’s website now indicates that instead of offering counseling services, students will be directed off-campus, which many students say they cannot afford.
“If the Counseling Center was completely cut from WCU it would be devastating for our students, faculty/staff and campus community,” said counseling center director, Rachel Daltry. “We not only provide mental health support and resources to students, we provide consultation, training, education and assistance to our faculty, staff and campus community.”
With community college enrollment numbers having steadily declined since 2011, a shrinking annual budget has forced colleges to revisit funding for college resources like student counseling. State investment in community colleges has also decreased, with a massive 10% cut to funding in 2011 and minimal change since. While West Chester has experienced an increase in students and annual budget during the 2010s, adapting the university to growing enrollment presents similar problems. Some of these problems have been ambiguously addressed by WCU but still go without concrete solutions, such as inadequate and expensive housing, and the university’s own lack of counseling resources. As Quad writer Kirsten Magas pointed out in a recent article, “With roughly 17,000 students on our campus, the bare minimum ratio of one to 1,500 students requires 12 full-time counselors on staff at the counseling center.” Our counseling center, which currently employs ten counselors, operates over capacity, and struggles to address the mental health needs of WCU’s student population. The limited resources of the counseling center lead some students to forgo necessary treatment because they are unable to afford private counseling.
Similar to the multi-million dollar renovation that has drawn criticism from HACC students, the end of West Chester’s ten year construction plan sees huge projects continue around campus, including the construction of an estimated $70 million common area near Lawrence Dining Hall. When asked about the increase of counseling resources in an October open forum, Zebulun Davenport, Vice President of student affairs, gave a tentative answer about gradually increasing the number of counselors. At the time of this article’s publication, representatives from West Chester’s budget office have not responded to an inquiry about plans to change the university’s counseling budget. Although the cuts to counseling programs at HACC may seem irrelevant to a university with an increasing budget, the protests raise questions about the college that all students could benefit from asking about how their institution is spending their tuition.
As colleges work to accommodate changes in programs, either what to cut or what to invest in, HACC’s protests have sparked students as investors to advocate for the resources that most directly help them—not the resources that make for the best brochure photos.
Brendan Lordan is a third-year student majoring in English writing and minoring in journalism. BL895080@wcupa.edu