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The missing piece at the ‘Best Darn Place of All’

By Eileen Torrez ’13

Princeton is an amazing place. The beautiful campus, gifted professors and all-star students make for an incredible four-year experience. Whether it’s Saturday night parties on the Street or Tuesday night cookies at Murray-Dodge, every Princetonian cherishes memories of his or her best times on campus. For me, one of the highlights was singing under the arches with the Wildcats, one of Princeton’s all-female a capella groups. The Wildcats were my on-campus family, my soul sisters and some of my best friends.

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So it came as quite a blow this January when I heard from a fellow Wildcat alumna that a member of our group, Audrey Dantzlerward ’16, had passed away. We were shocked and devastated. Audrey was one of the most exuberant people I had met at Princeton, with a bright smile and infectious laugh. During rehearsals, I often noticed how her joyful disposition was dampened by the demands of college life. In the few heart-to-hearts we had outside of rehearsals, we connected around our shared struggle as low-income minority students trying to adapt to Princeton’s heavy workload and highly individualistic academic culture.

When I heard the news of her passing, my heart sank like a ten-pound weight. Tears spilled from my eyes, for Audrey, for her family, for her friends and for the students who had gone before her. Such a beautiful soul, gone. While the impact on me was partly numbed by time and distance from Princeton, my heart ached deeply for friends who were still on campus, fighting to push through Dean’s Date and final exams while coming to terms with such a devastating loss.

In the weeks that followed, I hoped to see a sweeping response from the Princeton community acknowledging the tragedy and its impact on students. But while emails and Facebook messages abounded, the administration’s response to Audrey’s death was rather subdued. Only one statement appeared on Princeton’s webpage, and as a result, very few alumni even knew that a student had died. For students on campus, communication and support were even more minimal than one might expect. A memorial gathering was held the night of Jan. 12, where students and staff gathered to support one another and honor Audrey’s life. According to The Daily Princetonian’s report on the gathering:

“Senior Associate Dean of the College Claire Fowler [and all the residential college deans] sent an email to students before the meeting asking them to meet with a residential college administrator if they felt coping with Dantzlerward’s death was interfering with their academic work.”

While I’m sure Dean Fowler and the other deans meant well, this statement unfortunately suggests that in the eyes of the administration, academic work comes first, and student health comes second. Of course, Princeton is an academic institution, and keeping up with schoolwork is a high priority. But in the face of something as grave as the loss of a life, academics can and should be superseded by other concerns.

What students needed, especially those who were close to Audrey, was acknowledgment and support around the emotional reality of losing a peer. From what I heard from my friends on campus, this support has been limited at best. Counseling and Psychological Services offered a workshop on Distress Awareness and Response on Feb. 9, informing students on how to best care for friends having a hard time. While this marks a step in the right direction, it ultimately serves only as a band-aid over a much broader issue.

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Our society as a whole undervalues the importance of mental and emotional health: nearly 20 percent of American adults suffer from some form of mental illness, but fewer than half receive treatment. Mental health issues are largely stigmatized and silenced, overwritten by the story that success, money and prestige will lead to happiness. Unfortunately, this story has proven to be largely false. Money can’t buy happiness, and often the most successful people struggle under the weight of super-human responsibilities and expectations. Despite these sobering realities, many of us are still encouraged to put aside our holistic well-being in the name of achieving the ideal of success.

This dynamic can play out in a more extreme way at a place like Princeton, where student life is often heavily idealized. Princetonians are supposed to be the best of the best, and we want to prove it! As any late-night conversation with roommates might tell you, many students feel an intense pressure to succeed in every way — academically, professionally and socially. Even if things aren’t going well, there’s an incentive to project the image of being well put-together. In reality, however, it’s not always true.

As Princeton’s COMBO III survey found, roughly 50 percent of female students and 37 percent of male students report that they sometimes or often feel depressed. From the comments section of the ‘Prince’ to the Tiger Admirers Facebook page, Princetonians have been voicing their struggles and asking for help. Personally, I can’t count the number of conversations I had with peers who admitted to feeling completely overwhelmed at Princeton, to the point where they were considering leaving or taking a break. Because of the pressure to stay in the game — and in part because of stringent leave of absence rules — most of them decided to push through instead.

Unfortunately, these truths are hardly recognized by the administration. Actual mental health resources are limited, and no public, top-down reforms have been announced to address the cultural issues behind students’ distress. The result is a sink-or-swim, “show must go on” mentality that requires students to continually jump through hurdles while struggling to get the basic health support they need.

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Perhaps the clearest indication of Princeton’s lack of adequate mental health resources is that for the last five years, students have been creating much-needed support networks themselves. Grassroots initiatives like the Mental Health Forum, Mental Health Week and Lotus Café, an informal discussion group for students seeking greater mental and emotional well-being, have shown the deep ingenuity and compassion of Princeton students. They have provided a positive space for students who are struggling — or who have friends who are struggling — to voice their concerns and build solidarity with their peers.

But these efforts have their limits. In my two years as a Peer Health Adviser, I did my best to help build a better mental health environment on campus. In the end, though, there was only so much I could do while keeping my own head above water. Through my friendships with students who did amazing work through those initiatives, I saw how despite their genuine passion for the cause, they simply had too much work and not enough energy to create the comprehensive change they wanted to see. Without adequate training or compensation for their work, their efforts became a liability to their own school-life balance.

It's inspiring to see the power of these grassroots initiatives start to shift the culture on campus. But the truth is that even if a handful of committed students are willing to sacrifice more of their own academic careers to bring these projects to completion, it is not their job. There are paid professionals at Princeton charged with the mental and emotional well-being of students. They can take bolder steps toward reform, advocating for more programs and incentives that foster a better mental health environment on campus. The CPS workshop was a great place to start, but for real change to happen, these events and workshops need to happen year-round, and their subject matter must become a more ingrained, long-term and open conversation.

In addition, the administration can foster many other projects to help support the health and well-being of Princeton students. What about an AlcoholEdu-style program, focused on mental health issues? What about more counselors, and regular evaluation forms, at CPS? What about a Mental Health Week not just once a year, but every semester? These are a few of many ideas that I’m not the first to propose, but that have yet to be implemented. If we learned anything by losing Audrey, we learned that these initiatives need to start now. No one can get through an institution like Princeton without some support, and many students need more than what’s being currently offered.

Princeton leads the vanguard when it comes to cutting-edge research, technology and business ideas. The issue of mental health now presents an opportunity for the administration to show its commitment to being the best of the best in ways that really matter. This means publicly demonstrating a shift in priorities toward fostering a healthier mental and emotional environment on campus. It also includes implementing real changes that empower and encourage students to find complete mental well-being as part of their education and growth at Princeton. What if Princeton graduates were not just the most successful, but also the happiest?

Top-notch academic work requires top-notch mental health care. Students are asking for this support and doing the footwork — it's time for the administration to play a larger role. In doing so, Princeton can help change the collegiate culture surrounding mental health and create new ideas about what success looks and feels like. Most importantly, fostering overall well-being in the University we know and love just might help save the lives of Princeton students in years to come.

Eileen Torrez graduated Princeton in 2013. She can be reached at etorrez@princeton.edu.

Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article stated that only Dean Claire Fowler sent an email to students.Each residential college dean wrote an email to the students in their college.The ‘Prince’ regrets the error.