TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2015 THELANTERN.COM
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The Lantern takes a look into public transportation in and around campus. ON PAGE 2
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University President Michael Drake recounts his experience at a Rolling Stones concert. ON PAGE 5
The football team is set to compete against No. 8 Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1 in Glendale, Arizona. ON PAGE 12
Erasing the stigma of suicide ALEX DRUMMER Managing Editor of Content drummer.18@osu.edu AMANDA ETCHISON Editor in Chief etchison.4@osu.edu When Kayla Higginbotham walked by the Buckeye Campaign Against Suicide table at the involvement fair her freshman year, she had no idea that four years later, she would be helping her peers cope with the issues of mental health and suicide. “I saw ‘suicide’ written really big, and I know my initial reaction was to be like, ‘Eh? I don’t know about this,’” said Higginbotham, a fourth-year in psychology and women’s studies and the president of Buckeye Campaign Against Suicide. “I definitely think there’s a huge stigma attached to suicide and talking about that, especially on a college campus.” Despite the tendency of young adults to shy away from conversations regarding these issues, suicide is the second leading cause of death for persons aged 15-34 years. But Dr. John Campo, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Ohio State, said he sees this as preventable. “Suicide from our perspective is absolutely preventable, and I don’t think there is any way to approach it without what I would call a ‘zero tolerance mindset.’ How many suicides a year is acceptable? From my perspective, it should be zero,” Campo said. In 2013, there were 41,149 suicides in the United States, which
YEAR 135, ISSUE NO. 70
Tobacco-free policy aims to influence campus culture INAKI DE GUZMAN Lantern reporter deguzman.5@osu.edu
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According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, more than 90 percent of people who complete suicide have been diagnosed with a mental illness. equates to about 113 suicides each day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Suicide Facts at a Glance 2015. This problem hits close to home for some at OSU, as many college students experience large amounts of stress, which can be harmful to their mental health. Within a representative year at OSU, “one in three students reported prolonged periods of depression” and “one in four students had suicidal thoughts or feelings,” Matthew Fullen, program manager of the OSU Suicide Prevention
Program, said in an email. Furthermore, about 7 percent of OSU students actively considered suicide. More than 1 percent attempted suicide — approximately 850 attempts, Fullen said. Higgenbotham said simply talking about the subject could help those who are at risk of suicide get the care they need. “The more I started talking about it, the more I realized that the more you talk about it the easier it becomes to talk about it,” she said. “Now I talk about it so much that it’s such a normal thing for me to
talk about ... I kind of try to engage a lot of my friends in conversations about it just to kind of show them that suicide is not that scary of a topic to talk about.” Campo agreed that talking about suicide and mental health can be an effective way to show support and offer assistance. “The important thing for all of us to know about suicide is that people who struggle with suicidal impulses, that that impulse, it can kind of come over (them) like a wave,” Campo said. He added that it is helpful to understand how much of an impact access to resources can have on suicidal individuals during these overwhelming periods. SUICIDE CONTINUES ON 4
Ohio State is approaching the two-year anniversary of when it enacted the tobacco-free policy, which occurred in January 2014. The policy means no form of tobacco can be consumed, smoked or chewed, by any of its faculty, staff, students, vendors, volunteers or visitors while on campus. While OSU approaches the twoyear mark, the university is included among 1,130 tobacco-free universities, as of Oct. 2, according to Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights. “The idea was, let’s send a message to everybody that tobacco use is not okay and it should be denormalized,” said Dr. Peter Shields, a professor of internal medicine at the College of Medicine and deputy director of the OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center. “For me, the greatest impact would actually be around the students.” Shields said that as most smokers start in adolescence, the habit and addiction is cemented in early adulthood and while in college. The university’s tobacco free policy makes it harder for smokers to use tobacco on campus, forcing them off campus, and Shields said the hope is that this results in a continuing drop to on-campus use. However, some Buckeyes might TOBACCO CONTINUES ON 3
Vet hospital set to open in 2017 WILLIAM KOSILESKI Lantern reporter kosileski.2@osu.edu The Ohio State Veterinary Medical Center is renovating 57,000 square feet in a four-phase enhancement and expansion project in order to improve patient care. The construction at the OSU veterinary hospital’s existing building, located across Olentangy River at 601 Vernon L. Tharp St., has renovated its intensive-care unit, is constructing a new building for faculty offices and will revamp several other areas of the hospital, including the lobby and patient and multipurpose rooms. “The project basically will increase our capacity to accommodate the cases that need our care,
provide an improved teaching and learning experience for the clinical year of learning for the students, and also provide more optimal facilities for the actual care of the animals,” said Dr. Rustin Moore, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine and Ruth Stanton Chair. The project began construction in early 2015 and is set to be completed in fall 2017, Moore said. The OSU Board of Trustees recently approved an overall budget of $32.8 million, which will be paid with development and university funds, Dan Hedman, OSU Administration and Planning spokesman, said in an email. “It was originally about a $30 million budget, but with construction booming and costs ... for labor and supplies and materials escalat-
ing, we had to get an increase to be able to deliver the project without cutting something important out of it,” Moore said. The project’s main focus is on the Hospital for Companion Animals, which is for cats and dogs, as Moore said that about 70 percent of people in Ohio own a pet, making the project important not just for the hospital but for pet owners as well. In the past six years, the hospital saw a 45 percent growth, starting with about 19,500 patients per year. Now the hospital serves about 27,500 patients per year, Moore said. In addition to expanding the space in order to provide proper care for the animals, the project is looking to provide for students as
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A look at the conceptual art of the renovated lobby. well. “We are an academic veterinary medical center, which means in addition to serving the public with advanced veterinary care, we also teach veterinary students, and we also prepare and teach residents who become specialists. So we need the space for that reason,” Moore said. Moore said the renovations are
also necessary because the faculty, staff and students have outgrown the current building. The medical center is raising the money for the project, as it has raised about $22 million of the $32.8 million to date, said Melissa Weber, the director of communications and marketing. Because the money is being raised as the
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