As colleges and universities prepare for the fall semester, they have decisions to make about how to keep students safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. But alongside questions about socially distanced classes and dorms, university leaders are asking themselves about other kinds of safety, particularly how to approach mental health resources for students of color, amid a national conversation about anti-Black police brutality and a pandemic disproportionately hitting minority communities.
To delve into the issue, higher education leaders and experts gathered last week for an online meeting co-hosted by the American Council on Education and the Steve Fund, a non-profit focused on the mental health needs of students of color.
The convening was an opportunity to “think out loud with colleagues across the country, to see what common issues we are dealing with as well as … strategies to move forward,” said Dr. Tamara Stevenson, vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at Westminster College.
As one of the event’s participants, she appreciated the focus on “creative approaches” to raising awareness for minority students’ mental health and incorporating mental wellness into all the “foundational aspects of college life,” including the classroom.
This summer, students of color have been actively participating in protests following the death of George Floyd by police brutality, and universities must be prepared to talk about it when they return, Stevenson noted. At the meeting, she said university leaders discussed how to facilitate productive conversations on campus about what students witnessed during the protests.
“[Black students] sincerely see themselves in those who have been harmed by police brutality,” she said. “They see themselves and their family members and their friends experiencing microaggressions and macroaggressions, even while trying to just exist, just to live as human beings.”
For panelist Dr. David Rivera – a national advisor for the Steve Fund and an associate professor of counselor education at Queens College – a key takeaway from the conversation was that universities need to understand that students of color are coming back to campus with exacerbated racial trauma.
