One year after the Student Government Association launched its Mental Health Assembly, leaders are shrinking the body to streamline its approach to raising awareness of mental health resources on campus.
SGA President Ethan Fitzgerald and former Executive Secretary of Health Kaitlyn Burkhardt launched the assembly last year to improve access to mental health resources on campus like the Counseling and Psychological Services. Assembly leaders and former members said they want to revive old programs and launch more tangible initiatives after a year of planning and research.
Markella Lanara, a first-year graduate student in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s program who intends to join the assembly again this year, said she participated as a member last year as an undergraduate student and hopes to get started on more initiatives that have yet to be fully developed.
“We were mostly talking and deciding what course of action we want to take, but we haven’t really taken that action yet,” Lanara said. “So I think this year, the second year of the assembly, will be more decisive in that sense.”
Lanara said this year she hopes to focus on raising awareness of mental health resources like CARE referrals — an avenue for students to express concern about a friend through an online report — because many students don’t have a “deep understanding” of what support is available to them. She said students reported having little to no knowledge of mental health resources in a survey the assembly issued last year about student familiarity with campus resources like CAPS and The Center Clinic — a nonprofit mental health clinic staffed by doctoral students from the professional psychology program. The clinic offers group therapy and individual psychological evaluations for “affordable” rates based on an income scale.
“Many people don’t know about that, and most people know about CAPS, but I didn’t even know about this clinic before I joined the assembly,” Lanara said. “So I think it’s something we can grossly advertise at GW.”
The assembly’s new leader, SGA Sen. Jacob Wilner (CCAS-U), said last year’s assembly included about 20 students excluding the SGA co-chairs, but he plans to reduce that number to 10 to 12 this year to ensure every member’s ideas are heard in discussions, an effort he said was difficult last year because of the larger number of students in the assembly. He said this year, he spoke to Fitzgerald about last year’s meetings and expressed concern that too many voices might “overwhelm” the decision process when the body is trying to brainstorm initiatives.
“Sometimes it’s too many cooks in the kitchen,” Wilner said. “Everyone has great ideas, but it’s like, wow, too many ideas, what are we gonna do?”
Wilner said he wants to “revamp” the system by advertising and recruiting more students to join GW Listens, an anonymous peer hotline created by former SGA executive cabinet member Anastasiya Parvankin in 2017 for students to speak with trained student mentors about mental health challenges. He said the assembly began work last year to bring the organization back after it temporarily stopped services during the pandemic because its adviser stepped down from the position.
“These people are so passionate and are so smart and have all the tools,” Wilner said, “I think mental health assembly, to me, is just really an opportunity to give these students the opportunity to lead and make change.”
Two chairs from the executive and legislative branches, respectively, lead the assembly alongside a group of non-SGA students who apply to be members during the fall semester. Wilner said the assembly will resume monthly meetings once the executive branch and SGA senate appoint the second co-chair and upon their appointment will release an application for students to join the group.
Wilner said the assembly has not yet chosen the second co-chair, but the position will likely go to the executive secretary of health upon their appointment to the executive branch in the coming weeks, replicating the structure of last year’s chairmanship.
Wilner said this year he wants to establish spaces on campus that students can reserve for private telehealth therapy sessions. He said officials should reserve rooms in buildings like the University Student Center for students who have appointments and need to feel “safe” while talking to their therapists.
“I go to therapy pretty often, and I didn’t really want to do it in my room because my roommate and I lived on the Vern,” Wilner said. “I never knew how I could kind of have this opportunity to do therapy in a more personal space.”
Fitzgerald said securing mental health days for students was an initiative he prioritized as an SGA senator and co-chair of the assembly last year, but he was unable to speak with the Faculty Senate to gain their support before the end of the year. Fitzgerald said he will not be continuing as a co-chair of the assembly this year because of his new role as SGA president, but he met with the co-chairs of the Faculty Senate Committee on Educational Policy & Technology, Irene Foster and Sarah Wagner, last week and plans to appear in front of the committee at their October meeting to receive feedback on the initiative and next steps for getting the initiative approved.
“We’ve received pretty strong indications from them that they want to move forward with this, but they want to still work out the details to make sure that it can be effectively implemented,” Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald said the assembly will hold a mental health resource fair on Sept. 28 to showcase mental health resources on campus like CAPS, CARE team referrals and TimelyCare, a virtual health care platform where students can access therapy services. Fitzgerald said he originally planned to hold the fair last spring on April 26, but he canceled the event days before due to Kogan Plaza’s closure during campus protests. Campus security fenced off entrances to Kogan and University Yard when pro-Palestinian protesters set up an encampment in U-Yard last spring.
“The main thing is, ‘Hey, these are the resources that are available, if you want to engage, if you want to ask questions, that space will be there for that.’” Fitzgerald said.
Zaraia Fabunmi, the president of SoulfulBrewings — a student organization for students of color to discuss self care and cultural connections — said she hopes the assembly can communicate with officials in CAPS to become more representative of the diversity of the student body. She said deploying more mental health officials and directors of color to services like CAPS would help students of color feel more represented on campus.
“The body of the people who are leading those things and making the decisions about these resources and the way that they’re presented to the student body isn’t necessarily always representative of our student body,” Fabunmi said.
Fabunmi said she hopes the assembly and SGA as a whole can work to “value” the diverse voices of cultural student organization members by providing more funding to these groups. She said funding for groups that represent marginalized students should be a “priority” for the SGA during its next student organization funding allocations period, which will take place at the end of the semester.
“I want to see SGA and the mental health assembly work to truly uplift diverse voices by acting as more of a platform for us to succeed and be bold in our missions and goals for POC voices on campus,” Fabunmi said.
