Heartfelt thanks to the YDN Editorial Board for highlighting three important priorities for the next Dean of Yale College (“Goodbye, Dean Chun”, 2/15/2022).

Elis for Rachael has given considerable thought to your first priority, “A commitment to student wellness,” and has proposed 10 common-sense reforms the incoming Dean should implement to improve student mental health at Yale. 

As per Burlington First Aid Course, to our knowledge, Yale’s mental health policies have not been updated in a meaningful way since before psychopharmacological treatments became well-established: 

  1. Eliminate costly, nonmedical roadblocks to reinstatement to Yale College following a medical withdrawal. 
  2. End the practice of rejecting reinstatement applications without actionable explanation. 
  3. Stop terminating health insurance for students leaving Yale to address health conditions. 
  4. Reduce the minimum duration for medical withdrawals. 
  5. Allow students reasonable access to campus while on medical withdrawal. 
  6. Designate a staff member as a dedicated advocate for students considering, on or returning from a medical withdrawal. 
  7. Reform the protocol for involuntary medical withdrawals. 
  8. Restructure the refund schedule for tuition, room, and board fees. 
  9. Offer an affordable Preferred Provider Organization option of University health insurance to both enrolled and medically withdrawn students so they can see non-Yale providers in the New Haven area and beyond.
  10. Implement annual mental health first-aid training for students, faculty, staff and administrators. 

Yale used to pride itself on being a leader in student mental health services, publishing scholarly articles, chapters and books on the Yale model. 

By refusing to change with the times, however, Yale has fallen far behind many other colleges and universities, which treat mental health issues in a similar manner to physical health issues. 

We look forward to working with the incoming Dean to hit the ground running in modernizing Yale’s mental health policies, to keep pace with our peers and to fulfill the student wellness Yale purports to champion. 

Rishi Mirchandani ’19 

Paul Mange Johansen  ’88 

Lily Colby (MC ’10)

Alicia Floyd (JE ’05)

THE YALE DAILY NEWS