BY HANK REICHMAN

A well-known feature of American higher education, especially among large privates and public “flagships,” is the regional rivalry, mostly athletics-based.  You know, Ohio State-Michigan, Harvard-Yale, Alabama-Auburn, or UCLA-USC.  Here in the San Francisco Bay Area there’s Cal-Stanford (for anyone who may not be aware, Cal — short for California — is the University of California at Berkeley).  The epitome of their competition is the annual Big Game in football, but the rivalry extends to other areas as well, including academics.  Now, as a Cal alum (I earned my Ph.D there) and a long-time Berkeley resident, I’m hardly neutral in this.  Stanford is a great university, but it’s an elite private and Cal is public (although increasingly privatized, alas).  Moreover, Stanford has the Hoover Institution (great library/archive, not so great bias), the founders of the infamous MOOC, Coursera, and a right-wing professor who conspires to “get dirt” on students whose liberal political views he finds offensive.  On the other hand, as I’ve lamented on this blog before, Cal has thrown away millions on an ill-advised football stadium upgrade (as well as failed but crushingly expensive football coaches) and seems to have more than its share of sexual harassers.

But here’s another way to look at this rivalry: which school treats its students more compassionately.  That question arose for me this morning when just minutes apart I came upon two stories, one in the New York Times about Stanford’s treatment of students with suicidal thoughts, and another, admittedly from the campus PR office, about Cal-Berkeley’s efforts to address student food insecurity.

First, let’s look at what’s happening at Stanford where a class-action lawsuit accuses the university of discriminating against students with mental health issues by coercing them into taking leaves of absence, rather than trying to meet their needs on campus. “The cases described in the court papers,” the Times reports, “include a student who had an anxiety attack, one who was harming herself, and others who had thoughts of suicide or tried to kill themselves.  Legal experts say that under federal regulations, it is clear that students can be barred from campus if they pose a threat to others, but less clear if they pose a threat only to themselves.”

Moreover, according to the Times, “the Stanford lawsuit says that students who were placed on leave were effectively banished from the university and stripped of their privacy and autonomy.  Their own doctors were second-guessed by the university’s, the suit says, and the students were required to immediately withdraw from all classes, programs and housing.  To return to campus, they had to write personal statements ‘accepting blame’ for their behavior.”

Similar challenges to mental health leave policies have been lodged at schools like Princeton, Hunter College, Western Michigan University, George Washington University, Marist and Quinnipiac.  “Only half of college students experiencing a mental health crisis seek help, largely due to the justified fear of stigma and negative consequences,” the suit argues. “Too often, universities respond to disability-related behavior with exclusion, blame and draconian measures such as a forced leave of absence.”  As I previously reported, at Florida Polytechnic University this summer a student tragically committed suicide shortly after the school laid off its sole mental health counselor and out-sourced its mental health services.

Turning to Cal-Berkeley, while it may well be the case that its mental health services are no better than those offered by its cross-bay rival (I simply don’t know), at least it’s trying to do something about student hunger, a growing national problem.  In 2016, a survey found that more than four in ten University of California undergraduates do not have a consistent source of high-quality, nutritious food.  The study found that 19% of respondents went hungry at times.  An additional 23% were able to eat but lacked steady access to a good-quality, varied and nutritious diet.  Twenty-six percent of graduate students also reported food insecurity. (See also my 2016 report on hunger and homelessness at both the California State Universities and the UC.)

In response, Berkeley administrators report, last year the school helped an estimated 10,000 students sign up for CalFresh, a federally funded program that issues a free debit card for groceries to those who qualify.  They hope to enroll an additional 3,000 students in 2018-2019.  “We’re going all out on CalFresh,” said Ruben E. Canedo, food/basic needs co-chair of the UC-wide initiative and chair of the UC Berkeley Basic Needs Committee.

Meanwhile, the school reports, “the UC Berkeley Food Pantry, which has seen a tenfold increase in traffic since 2016, was redesigned this summer to better accommodate the 3,000 students who collectively visit the pantry 22,000 times a year.  The campus’s first full-time basic needs manager arrives on Sept. 10, and in December, a new basic needs center is scheduled to open in the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, next to the pantry.  A new basic needs website is launching later in the school year, and there also are plans to pilot a food recovery model to prevent food waste.”

Now, I always take university PR releases with a huge grain of salt and I know one Berkeley faculty member who has told me of her shocking experiences with hungry, homeless students.  But it does appear that the university is at least trying.

Given the highly privileged nature of Stanford’s student body and that institution’s $24.8 billion endowment (as of August 31, 2017), I suspect food insecurity there is a less pressing issue than in Berkeley.  But couldn’t Stanford do more for the mental health of its students beyond just, well, sending them home?

Rivalries aside, what these stories illustrate is that even at our most elite private and public research institutions many students face challenges that seriously impact their ability to learn and thrive — challenges that we educators must address.  And the problems are only more daunting at what Stanford leaders like to call the “less selective institutions” that comprise the overwhelming majority of American higher education and which struggle to obtain even minimal support.