Florida State University is launching a mandatory program to teach incoming students about “resilience” and “coping skills,” but will allow students to opt out if they have “experienced significant trauma.”
The new Student Resilience Project (SRP) is designed to help “strengthen student emotional and academic coping skills,” according to the “Frequently Asked Questions” on the program website. The “evidence-informed universal public-health style prevention program,” the website explains, is “intended to destigmatize mental health issues and encourage help-seeking” among students dealing with trauma or stress.
What kids with “mental health issues” are doing in college in the first place is left unexplained. Unless you accept the Left’s notion that everybody is insane….
While it is unclear how the program in funded, the SRP will reportedly cost over $300,000, including a $50,000 budget for “advertising costs,” according to Inside Higher Education. The program was developed by the Institute for Family Violence Studies (IFVS) at the FSU College of Social Work and features “highly engaging animation, videos, and numerous TED-talk style educational audio sessions from faculty and mental health providers.”
“Florida State University recognizes that some incoming students have experienced significant family or community stress,” Karen Oehme, director of IFVS, stated in a university press release. “Unmanaged stress responses can interfere with student success in college and cause long-term negative consequences.”
One is tempted to say, “oh, grow up,” or “study Shakespeare instead” — but that would be mean —
The document specifies that the SRP program is also geared towards students with no prior history of trauma, as the program “helps prepare students to face future stressful situations and build skills to bounce back from negative experiences associated with change, grief and loss, frustration and stress.”
While the program has not fully launched, students can watch a portion of the video series, “What I Wish I Knew,” that features students discussing difficulties they experienced during their first year at FSU and address how they dealt with them. Students also have access to mental health resources that address “every type of problem.”
Breaking news from 1636: college was never intended for everybody; hell, high school was never meant for everybody. But the notion that a college education automatically equals a better-paying job — correlation is not causation — has resulted in the public policy idea that college must be for everybody, no matter how diminished it becomes by trying to serve students who simply aren’t equipped for it. Society will pay the price.
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