How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
Most NYU students spent the last few weeks recovering from midterms and bracing for the semester's end. But former CAS freshman Sue Schaller has been running errands and doing housework at home in Arlington, Va.
Last month, NYU told Schaller to take an indefinite medical leave of absence, even though she felt she was on the path to overcoming depressed and suicidal feelings and wanted to stay at NYU.
While less than 0.3 percent of the 3,400 students who visit the University Counseling Service are forced to leave - and university officials described mandated leave as a last resort - Schaller's case brought to light a university practice few students were aware existed.
Yet in a survey of more than 75 universities and legal experts who weighed in on the issue, WSN found that NYU's policy is not unique, though the number of students asked to leave annually at other universities - and the manner by which universities decide a student must leave campus - vary.
Of NYU's 40,000 graduate and undergraduate students, between 100 and 120 students take medical leave each year, and about 10 do so against their will, university spokesman John Beckman said.
At Boston College, although a higher percentage of the student body takes medical leave, the portion of that group forced to leave is similar to that at NYU.
Of the 40 to 50 of the 9,000 undergraduates who take medical leave annually at BC, four or five students left involuntarily last year, said Thomas McGuinness, director of health services.
Yet to some schools, forced leave is a foreign concept.
Had Schaller chosen to attend Indiana's Purdue University, for example, she might still be attending classes.
Susan Prieto-Welch, director of counseling and psychological services at Purdue, which has about 38,000 students, said she does not know of a single case where a student was forced to take medical leave there.
And at Cornell University, none of the school's 19,000 students were forced to take leave last year, said Sharon Dittman, associate director of community relations. In fact, she said, only two students have left involuntarily in the past eight years.
While Boston College has no formal policy on mandated medical leaves of absence, Cornell's student handbook states that students can be forced to leave in extraordinary circumstances, including 'unresolved, ongoing and serious suicidal threats' and threats of harm to others. In these situations, a six-step process is led by the vice president for student and academic services.
At NYU, the process is less formal. 'When a student is a candidate for medical leave, the issues and circumstances are evaluated on a case-by-case basis in a framework of input from both the university's mental health professionals and the student's school,' Beckman said.
Schaller, the NYU student, said she did not feel she would be harmful to herself or others. In addition, she said the doctor who treated her during a four-night stay at NYU's Tisch Hospital advocated that she be allowed to return to NYU.
NYU cannot comment on the specifics of Schaller's case because of privacy laws.
Legal issues
A university can only mandate a student's withdrawal after a 'professional, individualized assessment' that a student is a direct threat to themselves or others, said Gary Pavela, director of judicial programs at the University of Maryland and editor of the national quarterly publication Synthesis: Law and Policy in Higher Education.
Suicidal thoughts alone are not enough to prove that students can be harmful to themselves, Pavela said.
The student and a medical health professional must be given the chance to provide evidence to the university, he said.
Pavela said he thought universities should spend more energy trying to help students get help and stay in school.
'I sometimes worry that universities focus on making policies instead of educating,' he said.
Rise in counseling
More college students have been reporting mood disorders and depression in recent years, Pavela said.
According to last year's National Survey of Counseling Center Directors, which compiled information from 333 schools, 81.4 percent of directors reported seeing more students with serious psychological problems than five years ago.
Beckman said that 50 percent more people visit NYU's counseling center today than five years ago. In comparison, 63 percent more students have sought counseling at Cornell than seven years ago, Dittman said.
Yet an increase in visits to university counseling centers might not indicate more mental health issues among college students, Pavela said.
'It's not that more students are dealing with these issues but that more students are willing to talk about their problems and go to counseling services,' Pavela said.
Schaller said she is one of many students who fall into that category.
'What it means to have a mental illness has become more understood,' she said. 'It has become more accepted to get help.'
Schaller's future
Back in Virginia, Schaller is seeing a therapist twice a week, and she is still taking the medicine prescribed to her at Tisch Hospital.
Schaller said nobody from the university has contacted her since she left on Oct. 23. While she doesn't have any immediate plans to return to NYU, she said she would consider returning next fall.
'I was learning and having a great time doing it when I was at NYU,' she said. 'My desire to learn has been somewhat paused, and I don't really want to be doing that right now.'
