By: Kate Powell
The college admission process for high school seniors across the country has become increasingly competitive and demanding. For the elite schools, students need to be the best of the best, pressured to overload in extracurriculars, maintain exceedingly high GPA’s, and sandwich as many AP’s as possible within the span of four years. An acceptance into a university in The Ivy League, eight of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, is a dream shared by tens of thousands of students each year. But questions have been raised regarding the schools’ attention and support for students’ mental health due to the continued suicides and the insensitive withdrawal policy from one of the most renowned universities of the eight: Yale.
As an entering freshman at Yale in the midst of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, Rachel Shaw-Rosenbaum struggled with the oppressing isolation of remote learning. In an interview with the Yale Daily News, the student-run campus newspaper, in early September of that year, Shaw-Rosenbaum spoke openly about her feelings of loneliness upon arrival: “It was kind of sad moving all of my stuff in and unpacking by myself. People are on quarantine schedule, so there wasn’t anyone to talk to. So I moved myself in for a couple of hours, and cried.” Later in the article, Shaw-Rosenbaum admitted that, “I don’t know if I’d say that I’d feel mental health-wise safe, because I’m not having a great time right now.” The following semester, after already one trip to the hospital and continued solitude, Shaw-Rosebaum considered suicide. In a Reddit post, she wrote that she had “attempted suicide 3 times in the past 3 days” and feared being “academically withdrawn from the university.” On March 18, 2021, Rachel Shaw-Rosenbaum was rushed to the hospital, after being discovered in her dorm without a heartbeat. She remained in a coma for the next three days, before her family decided they needed to pull the plug.
Rosenbaum’s death sparked outrage and demands for change over Yale’s withdrawal policy and reinstatement process. At Yale, students struggling with mental health issues are often asked to withdraw from the university. Their only chance to be readmitted is through a lengthy reapplication process that requires students to write an essay detailing their reasons for withdrawal and their hope for readmittance, as well as to secure recommendations. Last April, amid criticism, Yale dropped the requirements of an interview with its reinstatement committee and the fulfillment of two courses at another university for reapplication. And previously, in 2015, the university even charged a $50 reapplication fee.
It was the fears of possible withdrawal, alongside imprisoning loneliness, that caused eighteen year old Shaw-Rosenbaum to take her own life. And, heart-wrenchingly, she is not alone in her fear. Five years prior, another Yale undergrad, Luchang Wang, expressed her fears about withdrawal and reapplication in a letter on Facebook. “Dear Yale,” she wrote, “I loved being here. I only wish I could have had some time. I needed time to work things out and to wait for new medication to kick in, but I couldn’t do it in school, and I couldn’t bear the thought of having to leave a full year, or of leaving and never being readmitted. Love, Luchang.” She feared a second withdrawal from the university, and couldn’t come to terms with yet another reinstatement process. Instead, Wang took her life, jumping off the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge.
Yet, still, after the deaths of two of its students, Yale seemingly refuses to make any significant changes to address campus mental health. In fact, according to The Washington Post, mental health issues have exacerbated: “Last year, roughly 5,000 Yale students sought treatment – a 90 percent increase compared with 2015.” Yale has been slow to act upon this growing problem: students struggle to schedule therapy sessions, offered for only 30 or 45 minutes biweekly. Yale has recently hired more therapists in an attempt to give students additional access to support and counseling. But many students don’t feel the university is doing enough.
Forced withdrawal continues to threaten the stability of Yale students struggling with mental health. On November 14th, The Washington Post published an article detailing Yale’s withdrawal and reinstatement policies and its impact on students. The article specifically follows a Yale student named as “S,” using her first initial to protect her identity. After surviving a sexual assault in the summer after her freshman year, S battled with severe PTSD as she approached the close of her sophmore year in 2021. That June, she was ushered to the hospital after downing a bottle of pills. When she regained consciousness, S was forced to face a grim reality: Yale administrators required that she withdraw from the school. S went through the hoops of reapplication: she wrote her essay, obtained her recommendations, and completed two courses at another institution. This July, she was readmitted back into Yale. But, The Post reported that S had lost the sense of pride she once had for the university, and now at 21, three years older than when she previously was on campus, S felt like a “stranger.”
Following The Washington Post’s article, Yale’s Director of Mental Health & Counseling, Paul Hoffman, defended the university, claiming that the article “perpetuated a dangerous belief that college students should stay in school whatever the risk to their mental health and safety.” He argues that only a “small number take a medical withdrawal,” and that the reinstatement process is “routine,” which “in the past five years, well more than 90 percent of students who sought reinstatement following a medical withdrawal were approved upon their first request.” In concluding his statements, Hoffman called The Post’s article “misguided” in its “focus on continuous enrollment” and its neglect of the importance of “taking time necessary for mental health care.”
Yale’s handling of students’ mental health has raised questions about the legitimacy of other institutions’ health policies. For the many juniors and seniors researching and applying to colleges this year, it is advisable to thoroughly investigate each university’s decisions and policies regarding mental health and beyond.
