The two undergraduate women who filed a lawsuit last November against Yale for discriminatory practices are profiles in courage. While still enrolled, they challenged the college systematically discriminated against students with mental health problems and
pressured students to withdraw, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, among other statutes.
I was proud to support them as a fellow plaintiff.
Elis for Rachael, of which I am a core member, is a nonprofit organization of students, alumni, family and friends of
Rachael Shaw-Rosenbaum, a first-year student who took her own life in March 2021.
We were initially brought together shortly after Rachael’s death by Lily Colby, a 2010 Yale College graduate. As she puts it, we are “a small but scrappy group committed to change decades-old mental health policies at Yale.” In addition to this
lawsuit, we also raised and distributed funds to support students on a mental health leave of absence. A suicide survivor myself, I am keenly aware of the factors and (mis)perceptions that could potentially push someone to believe their life was no longer worthy.
College can be stressful, as young adults form their identities and decide upon a future life trajectory. Students at Ivy League colleges often place unnecessary additional burdens on themselves to meet unreasonable expectations of “success,” striving for some unachievable ideal of perfection.
The role of the college should be to nurture motivation and resilience, not to weed out what it believes to be weak links who might tarnish its reputation. As Alicia Floyd, a 2005 Yale College graduate and another Elis for Rachael core member points out, “Yale is a formidable authority figure with the privilege and responsibility to teach students and other colleges what a world of disability equity looks like.”
In the case of the Ivy League, mental health policies have long favored the latter approach over the former, as detailed in a 2018
Ruderman Foundation Report: the highest grade earned was a D+ (University of Pennsylvania); Yale and Dartmouth both failed. A Jan. 31, 2022
feature article
by Yale Daily News reporter Serena Puang (’23) highlighted just how difficult life can be for students with mental health challenges.
This is why the
settlement
we reached with Yale last week is so important.
Effective immediately, some Yale undergraduates will now be able to study part-time as an accommodation. Students on medical leave (previously called “medical withdrawal”) will have access to campus spaces, resources, and the community that is so crucial to their sense of belonging and self-worth. Students may maintain their health insurance plan for a year, providing them with access to potentially life-saving health care. Medical leave policies will be streamlined and clarified, and a non-evaluative administrator will serve as a Time Away resource. The length of a medical leave will now be individualized, and Yale has committed to, when possible, strongly considering the opinion of the student’s treatment provider.
These significant changes in mental health policy are a first step toward easing some of the unnecessary pressure students feel. But as Willow Sylvester, a 2022 Yale College graduate and another core member warns, “The key is in implementation. Not just in making things look good on paper, but in doing right by the student in front of you.”
I would like to believe these policy changes will help usher in a culture shift as well, from callousness and competition to compassion and care.
Sadly these policy changes can never return Rachael to us, nor any of the
other Yale students
who have taken their own lives. But they may convert help-seeking behavior from a possible punishment to a proper pathway of healing.
As Rishi Mirchandani, a 2019 Yale College graduate and another core member, proclaimed, “Yale alumni from across the past few decades will rejoice knowing that the suffering they faced at the hands of Yale’s mental health stigma will not be replicated any longer.”
We hope other Ivy League universities and colleges across the country will follow suit, so that further progress will no longer require super-human acts of courage.
Paul Mange Johansen is a core member of Elis for Rachael, Yale College class of 1988. He is a former psychiatric researcher, and currently works as a Biostatistician at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, Mass.
