A group of Princeton alumni have formed a mental health council seeking to raise awareness and push for solutions on campus in the wake of several undergraduate student deaths.
“I don’t think any alumni really know what’s going on or how severe it is,” said Josh Weinstein ’09, a former Undergraduate Student Government (USG) president who spearheaded an awareness campaign during Reunions. “So that’s really the first step, is raising awareness. And the second step is sort of aggregating a lot of the really smart, sharp people in the alumni base and bringing them into the conversation to try to drive for solutions.”
Weinstein’s Reunions campaign included a van with an LED billboard, t-shirts, and a website with haunting statistics about mental health at college campuses and at Princeton. Four undergraduates have died by suicide since 2022, most recently Lauren Blackburn ’26, who died in April.
“Over time, USG [Undergraduate Student Government] has done more. Society has done more. The administration has done more. [University Health Services] has done more. But we gotta really do a lot more,” Weinstein told the ‘Prince.’
Tiffanie Cheng Wu ‘24 will continue the push with the formation of the Alumni Mental Health Council. Wu believes that the fundamental problem is Princeton’s stressful climate, which she believes has done little to ameliorate students’ anxiety caused by pressure they feel from their peers.
“The climate of Princeton does not allow one to prioritize [mental health] at all. It’s always thinking about, ‘Okay, I have to do well. Academically, I have to do well. Socially, I have to do well. Professionally.’ All these things first, and then it’s my mental health,” Wu told the ‘Prince.’
The council Wu formed, she says, comprises alumni volunteers who are willing to give back to students and are similarly worried.
“For the love of Princeton and the people there, I am being very careful and intentional about how I want to go about this. I want to be able to get feedback and have brainstorming sessions with alumni that care equally about this cause,” Wu said.
The first meeting of the council was held on Tuesday, July 29th, according to Wu. At the meeting, members discussed the official mission of the council and future direction, including collaboration with the USG Mental Health Committee. The council hopes to engage students on the resources available to them on campus.
“One thing that we really wanted to do is provide training to raise awareness [on] how to recognize when you are going through something and how to reach out for help right in the very beginning,” Wu said. “It’s really important to be very intentional with the material that is being presented, and also being able to actually engage students, whether it be coming from the Residential College Advisor or the residential colleges.”
Wu said that the council will work closely with the current USG mental health chair, Allen Nieva ’26, to provide as many resources as possible to undergraduates.
Nieva told the ‘Prince’ in an interview that the USG’s mental health committee has already extended communication with alumni in the hopes of providing more resources to undergraduates.
Both Nieva and Wu expressed the hope that official plans and discussions would be well underway towards the winter.
“What we can do is that we can filter. We can put out communications about this stuff. We can show the student body that, number one, there is mental health support, and there is an interest in promoting mental health beyond just the systems that exist at Princeton,” Nieva said.
He added, “It’ll be particularly helpful because alumni are often the most sympathetic towards student concerns, given that they were students at one point as well.”
Luke Grippo is an assistant News editor for the ‘Prince.’ He is from South Jersey and usually covers University politics, on a national, regional, and local scale.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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