<p>For two years I attended the honors college of a state school in the rural midwest. My freshman year, a male classmate attempted suicide because he "fell in love" with me. Obviously it isn't my place to diagnose him, but I got to know him pretty well and my guess is that he suffered from a personality disorder and some mild schizophrenia. My second year he tried to get revenge by stalking me. Eventually his behavior caused me so much depression and anxiety that I left school in the middle of a term. </p>
<p>I tried to explain the uniqueness of the situation to the administrators of the honors college, but when they weren't hounding me about my declining grades (anything below a "B" meant a stern meeting with three administrators) they were shrilly insisting that I was "troubled" and demanding that I use the university's counseling services, which, needless to say, were useless.</p>
<p>After two quarters of mediocre grades, they called me in for one last meeting, offered some fulsome, offensive praise ("we're sure you're going to do great things") and removed me from the honors program. It wouldn't have been a huge deal had I not had to spend more time and money there taking classes not required by their honors program. I felt that all the work I had done there was in vain. Embittered and humiliated, I left the university for good.</p>
<p>I agree that it isn't a university's responsibility to parent its students, but I do believe that institutions have a "duty of care" when students are in abusive situations. With the meddlesome and judgmental behavior of the administrators, my university failed both to provide a comfortable, safe environment for me and to provide adequate care for my ill classmate.</p>
<p>But it's probably too much to ask, since the college's first concern seemed to be to produce Marshall scholars and to distance itself from the university's enduring mediocre reputation.</p>
<p>I'm starting to regret having posted such a personal story, but I'm very passionate about this. And this is a topic for another forum, but I think this makes for a good cautionary tale regarding what some state school honors colleges profess to offer versus what they're actually able to offer. In many ways I felt guilty for having "let them down" (I heard from a student who worked in the honors office that one of the administrators had complained that they had "bent over backwards" to recruit me), when (luckily) I've come to realize that I owed them nothing other than my best effort given the circumstances.</p>
<p>Potemkin, thanks for sharing that story. We can't forget the impact of a mentally ill classmate on other students. I took my cousin a very long time to get over the horror of his roommate commiting suicide.</p>
<p>MacTech, yes she did recover, but the road to recovery was several years longer than I think it should have been because of that man's negligence. If a student finally musters the courage to deal with a problem they are ashamed about, and are offered only a useless "solution", it may be hard for them to seek help again for a long while.</p>
<p>No, the school had some weak affiliation with a Protestant denomination like many liberal arts college, but no it wasn't religious.</p>
<p>When we were on our tour of Brandeis last year, the tour came to a stop out side the school Psychiatrist's office where we we told our son was entitled to 8 free visits per semester!</p>
<p>well, maybe these people shouldn't be there in the first place. I'm really not sure where my sympathies lie. It's college....not prison...or for that matter a mental ward. I'm not sure whether I believe it comes down to the person or the system...maybe both.</p>
<p>it should be no problem as long as they have the proper resources to manage their conditions. unfortunately it seems as if many universities lack those resources, either by negligence, ignorance, or to cut costs.</p>
<p>I think somebody mentioned car accidents as the leading cause of death for college students. They could be wrong, but I think it's a pretty reasonable guess, in any event.</p>