Be Very Quiet. They’re Culling Rabbits.
By It turns out Mount St. Mary’s plans to use surveys to identify bunnies in need of drowning and/or Glocks to the head involved questions like these:
“How often were each of the following things true in the last week?:
I felt depressed.
I felt that I could not shake the blues, even with the help of family and friends.
I thought my life had been a failure.
I felt that people disliked me.”
Every time an institution takes advantage of its position of power to extract information about mental illness, and then uses that to hurt them, it teaches people with mental illness that it is dangerous to ask for help. Universities in particular have a duty of care to their students. Some incoming freshman are still legally minors who have left their home to reside in college dorms. It is just viciously irresponsible to teach teenagers that their university might be planning on using a disclosure of depression against them. Further, I am just a simple caveblogger, and not a lawyer, but this seems like an ADA violation to me. Perhaps commenters more sophisticated about the law can weigh in.