Student Wellness

IT MIGHT TAKE A REMEDIAL COURSE just to fathom the statistics. At The City University of New York (CUNY) in 2007, 71.4 percent of the first-time freshman class of 9,154 students coming to CUNY’s community colleges required one or more remedial courses.

AS AN ENTHUSIASTIC signatory to the Amethyst Initiative, a joint statement issued by college and university presidents and chancellors urging public debate on the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, I am pleased to say the discussion is certainly underway.

A strange and inspiring thing happened this summer. Higher education grew a backbone. In July a group of 100 college and university presidents calling themselves the Amethyst Initiative came forward with the not-so-surprising news that young people on college campuses drink alcohol before they reach the legal age of 21.

DO ANY OF THE FOLLOWING campus disputes sound familiar to you?

--An academic department chair is struggling with warring factions among the faculty who do not get along and are engaged in petty in fighting.

VIRTUALLY EVERY HIGHER ed institution offers some type of employee retirement program along with a handful of optional workshops on retirement-related topics. But is that enough?

LONG BEFORE HE BECAME PRESIDENT OF <b>Frostburg State University</b> (Md.), Jonathan C. Gibralter was teaching elsewhere. The high level of student alcohol abuse compelled him and his wife-who ran the alcohol and drug prevention program there-to personally urge the president to take action.

AMERICA'S COLLEGE HEALTH systems are gravely ill. Unless faculty and campus administrators address these coverage issues, students could be one disease or accident away from losing the education for which they are paying.

MEET THE MILLENNIAL STUDENT. SHE is busy, goal oriented, and perhaps stressed. She might be depressed too. Depression made it difficult for nearly half of students to function in 2005, according to the 2006 American College Health Association National College Health Assessment, which surveyed more than 94,800 students.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE secretary who fell asleep at work, facedown on her computer keyboard? Or maybe you heard about the employee who broke down crying in his manager's office, admitting that he needed help for a problem he had been hiding for months-his addiction to alcohol.