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I attended Rice from August 2010 to September 2011 and again from January 2012 to March 2012. From September 2010 to September 2011, I was physically, verbally and sexually abused by a boyfriend I had met during my first few days as a student at Rice. </p>
<p>Wow, if even some of that is true, that's horrible. And if they really make students strip to search for self-injury wounds, that's an excellent way to traumatize students and make sure they never come forward about self-injury in any way, shape, or form.</p>
<p>It’s no doubt a complex situation, but there’s also a fair number of people who say that they have had similar experiences with the counseling services there. Also, it is not legal to forcibly withdraw a student from campus for mental health reasons unless (a) there is substantial evidence that they are a danger to OTHERS (not just themselves) or (b) their behavior is substantially interfering with the educational experiences and well-being of others despite the use of other, more supportive interventions. It’s a high bar, brought about in part by lawsuits against universities that forcibly withdrew students who sought help for suicidal ideation or attempts. So, it’s something universities should be doing only in extreme cases.</p>
<p>I’m wondering why OP thought it was appropriate to quote extensively from the initial article but only link to the school’s response? Why is college bashing so appealing? Here, as in the recent Amherst case, we have another troubled student making accusations that her school cannot effectively counter because of privacy considerations. As in that case, I think it was ishoddy journalism to publish a possibly slanderous “opinion” piece when the facts can never be disclosed.</p>
<p>Because of length and because the response basically said “we have great services.” </p>
<p>I think Rice is a wonderful institution, and I’m not trying to “bash” it. As a psychology student, I see both sides of the issue–on one hand, student safety should be a priority and that may include forcible leave. On other other, victim-blaming and punishing students for seeking mental health care have a lot of potential backlash. My research is largely in trauma/rape/domestic violence and so how universities handle sexual assault and subsequent sequalae are of great interest to me. It’s true that there are X sides to every story and that the Op-Ed may not be 100% representative, but there were better ways to address it then saying “she’s lying but we can’t say how. We have great services.” Say you noted the article, that you’re in contact with her, that you’re constantly making strides to improve your services, etc,</p>
<p>Also, from a White Paper on the decisions (with case law examples–the Mount Holyoke example is a particularly good read, as it demonstrates how a code of conduct can legally and ethically be used to force a withdrawal due to disruption, but that the college probably needs to demonstrate the use of other, less severe actions first):</p>
<p>If no action was taken & the young lady had subsequently harmed herself, then Rice officials would have been blamed for failure to act.</p>
<p>Based on the limited information in this thread, it seems as Rice University officials have acted appropriately in suspending/dismissing the male student, asking the female to take a rest & seek medical help, readmitting her, checking her when (presumably) visible bruises/cuts/scars were noticed & dismissing her when she appeared to present a danger to herself. Rice is a university, not a psychiatric facility.</p>
<p>Interesting, the Dean does not deny her story re the dismissal. Also, I am amazed at his attacks on this student w/o explaining what actually happened between them. Rice obviously did not discount the student’s allegations given the suspension of the other student in question. </p>
<p>Instead of explaining what happened after that, the Dean hides behind privacy while at the same time not hesitating to smear her reputation without relating any facts. Also, the part about discouraging others from reporting sexual assaults etc is over the top and any such outcome would more likely result from school policies as opposed to this one student’s complaints. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, this is a rough situation because Rice most likely had legitimate concerns about whether the school represented an appropriate place for a student they consider suicidal and the bruises et al might have been reasonably perceived as more than clumsiness. On the other hand, outright dismissal is very harsh – even for a suicidal student. I would have expected at a minimum another leave of absence and recovery period. I wonder if omitted from the student’s story was the Dean offering her this option and she refusing it prior to the dismissal. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the Dean is the educator here and not the student and I would have expected a much different letter from him.</p>
<p>I, in turn, am amazed that you characterize his remarks as an “attack” on her, and that you criticize him for not violating her privacy in order to defend his staff.</p>
<p>What, precisely, would you have him do? Remain silent, while she spreads a potentially inaccurate story that might indeed discourage other students from reporting assaults or reaching out for psychiatric help when in need?</p>
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<p>Indeed. Although you are making the assumption that the school considered her “suicidal.” Their actual concerns remain unstated.</p>
<p>I read most of the comments, and it appears that other students dispute the assertion that the services at Rice are “the best,” pointing to superior response protocols at Cornell. (Not surprising at a school that has suffered highly-publicized clusters of suicides.) It seems that Rice–and most schools–could look to those protocols for a model. But even the facts of the comparison are in dispute, with people citing different levels of training, differently qualified responders, different response times, and so forth.</p>
<p>“Instead of explaining what happened after that, the Dean hides behind privacy while at the same time not hesitating to smear her reputation without relating any facts.”</p>
<p>Where was the smearing exactly? He said there were “inaccuracies” and “misrepresentations” but that hardly counts as a smear. </p>
<p>And it is not “hid[ing] behind privacy”. He is not permitted to talk about someone’s private medical file. You expect him to say “she has had numerous psychotic episodes and in September was discovered to be eating pieces wallboard and claimed it was bread wafers given to her be Maria Theresa of Austria”. He cant do that. </p>
<p>She can make her claims and all he can do is say “thats not accurate”. </p>
<p>Like he noted I dont find it likely that there is some vast conspiracy of psychiatric professionals against her.</p>
<p>I think any time a school is labeled “the happiest” there are going to be counter examples. It’s sort of a weird thing to measure.</p>
<p>Many years ago, my husband’s roommate suffered a mental breakdown after a relationship ended. We were 20 year olds with no training in how to handle what for us was an overwhelmingly frightening experience. The Rice administration was wonderful and helped get the young man admitted to a psych hospital across the street, where he received treatment. He was able to receive the care he needed, return to school and graduate and go on to his life as an engineer. </p>
<p>You don’t hear too much about the situations where things go right, but rather about the times when things go wrong. Add in the instability of the people involved, and it’s hard to really figure out what really happened.</p>
<p>Take the time to read the comments that are attached to both articles. They are not pretty. The majority support Olivia and there are multiple stories of other students who sought mental health services from Rice and were then promptly dismissed and given the same two hour window to pack their toys and leave. One student writing an article slamming the administration is one thing, many, many comments of support and similar stories are another. I just sense a larger problem at Rice that parents and future students might want to question before admission. And frankly it sparks a conversation about mental health services and protocols at any university you may be shopping.</p>
<p>^^I have to agree. At the very least, there’s an indication in all of these threads, of a standard operating procedure that is designed to hand off sticky situations to the mental health estblishment. In Rice’s case, it’s not even clear whether they did that much: they just expelled her.</p>
<p>without commenting on this direct case (since I don’t have the time to look at the details) you have to remember that universities are in many ways like big corporations then like we would wish them to be, places there to nurture young people into adulthood and such. Most schools of any size are huge bureaucracies and as such may not always work like you think they do. </p>
<p>Among other things, schools and colleges are marketing organizations, promoting an image (such as Rice being full of the “The Happiest students”) and they spend a lot of time building that brand…and it could be (and again, I am using hypotheticals here) that things like sexual assault and mental health services were designed to ‘protect the brand’, where the basic answer is if a kid is problematic, get them out of there, it would it ‘protecting the brand’. In some ways, it is no different then a corporation that has defect problems like Toyota did and hid them, rather then deal with them, or otherwise try to cover up problems or issues. Again, let me re-iterate, I am not commenting on the Rice case or whether it is true or not, what I am saying is why such a thing may go on. Hopefully the negative PR will cause the school to evaluate their programs and see if things need changing, that is never an unhealthy thing, to look and see if there is any validity in what she and the other comments said, if there is room for improvement, and if there is, actually do something about it.</p>
<p>And yes, federal law is involved, mental health issues are covered in various civil rights laws on discrimination plus under ADA from what I understand. A good friend of mine was in law school at a prestigious school and has severe health issues that can flare up, a kind of arthritis-like disease that can flare up or where the meds can cause serious side effects. She ran into that and was having trouble with classes, had to withdraw from some, and under the law would be considered disabled, yet the school in effect tried to do what is alleged here, to pressure her to leave the program and so forth. My friend is no dummy and through a family friend got in touch with a lawyer specializing in these kinds of cases (and mind you, this is a top law school, one with a reputation for fighting for the kinds of rights laws we are talking about) and the school’s dean and bureacracy had to back down, because as the lawyer pointed out, it would look crappy for a law school to be found in violation of state and federal statutes they helped in many cases advocate for and write…bureacracies and institutions love order, they love projecting a harmonious image, and things like reported here would gybe with that.</p>