Lawmakers have began discussing ways to prevent more tragedies from happening on college campuses, including discussing the improvement of campus mental health facilities and security plans. Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs stated that "We are here to begin a discussion, in the aftermath of Virginia Tech, to make sure that we are doing everything we can to prevent any other campus and any other students and their families from experiencing the nightmare and loss Virginia Tech experienced."Russ Federman, director of psychological services at the University of Virginia stated some disturbing facts during the meetings:
-94% of students feel overwhelmed during the school year
- 50% of students feel so depressed that it is difficult to function
- 9% of students consider suicide
- 1.3% of students actually attempt suicide
Federman has also stated that he feels psychological help and mental help resources are beginning to fall behind the curve in terms of how many resources are available for troubled students. Improving university security proves to be a difficult task as many university campuses are tied in with local communities and changing security measures in small towns could prove to be a difficult task (juggling university and municipal laws/securities).
It is promising to see a group of prominent individuals discussing what could possibly be done to increase security on college campuses. It is also unfortunate that it took such a dreadful catalyst for this summit to occur, but some good must come out of the wake of the attacks. Putting more focus on mental health facilities and increasing privacy of psychological accounts and analysis will surely help troubled students (who are apparently the majority of college campuses, according to Federman). The September 11th terrorist attacks were mentioned in the article as events that sparked an increase in nationwide security. Hopefully the same will be done here, and college campuses and other areas of education will remain safe places to be.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/washington/24campus.html?_r=1&ref=education&oref=slogin
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