Verbum Ultimum: Dig a Little Deeper

The JED Foundaton misses many important critcisms of the administraton regarding mental health and wellbeing on campus, despite repeated calls to acton by students.

On April 27, Provost David Kotz sent an email to campus with the JED Foundation’s fndings and recommendations regarding the state of mental health and well-being at the College. Dartmouth commissioned the report in May 2021 in response to heated student-led calls to re-evaluate college mental health policies after a wave of tragedies on campus. However, despite the College’s promise that this survey is a “comprehensive assessment of our campus mental health and well-being environment,” according to Kotz’s email, the report fails to adequately address concerns regarding the College’s mental health infrastructure and lacks meaningful suggestions for how to improve mental health on campus.

The JED Foundation’s report addresses some weaknesses in the College’s policies and practices, but it downplays them, or even worse, portrays them as strengths. Ever since the College frst partnered with the JED Foundation, students have criticized the College’s shortage of counselors compared to demand. Many students, including members of this Editorial Board, have found it difcult to schedule a single appointment with the counseling center in a timely manner. The JED report refects none of these concerns. In his email regarding the JED report, Kotz lists “Counseling Center Stafng” under “Representative Sample of Strengths,” despite continued reports that counselors are inaccessible. Apparently, the JED Foundation considers 14 clinicians and only one case manager to be satisfactory for a campus of 6,700 students, according to the report.

This section about the College’s counseling center also ofers perhaps the least impressive statistic in the entire report, boasting that the center ofers counseling in only three languages besides English: Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese. These three languages are simply not enough. It is also worth noting that numerous commonly spoken languages are missing: Spanish, Korean, French and many others. The JED Foundation commends the supposed availability and diversity of counselors at the center, which is harmful when the reality leaves much to be desired. This leaves open the possibility for the College to use this report as a vindication of its insufcient commitment to students and justify investing its resources elsewhere.

The report also repeatedly recommends, in various forms, that the administration evaluate the state of mental health on campus or develop strategic plans to improve it. This confused some students, us included, who thought these were the responsibilities of the JED report itself and were surprised to see them so blatantly dodged. One recommendation in particular bafed us: The JED Foundation “recommended developing a strategic plan that included current and long-range plans.” It also ofers a similar suggestion: “that Dartmouth take a strategic approach to address mental health and well-being.” This sentence is totally devoid