On a sunny spring day at Georgetown University, you'd never know Todd Olson had a thing to worry about. Outside his office, flowering trees dropped petals on a young couple napping on a yellow blanket. Some students were planning a spelling bee fundraiser, and others sat in the grass patting the school's bulldog mascot, Jack.
But Olson kept his BlackBerry clipped to his belt: He's vice president for student affairs and, like deans at colleges everywhere, he's always just one buzz away from a crisis.
He has to deal with the side of student life most people don't see -- accidents, attacks, breakdowns. Even bright young things have dark secrets.
"The number one medication in college is antidepressants," said Richard Kadison of Harvard University, whose book about the growing mental health crisis at colleges was published last year. "It's surpassed birth control pills."
At Georgetown this fall, a student drowned in an accident in the Potomac River and a senior died in a fire at his apartment. A student was killed at Johns Hopkins University this winter, just months after another was stabbed to death. And the body of a University of Maryland student was found floating in the Anacostia River this semester, days before a senior died in a fire.
"We have an idealized notion that this is a carefree time," said Linda Clement, vice president for student affairs at U-Md. For many, college is the best time in life -- the most fun, the most exploratory, the most illuminating -- but it brings challenges, too.
Kevin Kruger used to have that job at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and he was always on edge, he said. Any late phone call would trigger a surge of adrenaline. "When the phone rings, you don't know what's on the other end . . . suicide, rape, knifing, fight. . . .
"I can't even begin to count the number of times at 3 in the morning I threw on jeans, drove to campus, dealt with whatever was there, maybe 10 minutes after a student was stabbed. Or a kid up on a tower trying to jump off the tower."
Deans of student life came along early in the 20th century when university presidents didn't want to deal with disciplinary problems, said Kruger, who is associate executive director of NASPA Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. As colleges grew, the deans acted like parents, setting strict rules: Girls visiting boys must keep their feet firmly planted on the floor at all times. Then came the 1960s and '70s, drugs and Vietnam and the sexual revolution, and students demanded to be treated as adults.
The job isn't getting any easier, for a bunch of reasons: Overprotective parents. Terrorist threats. Lawsuits. And teenagers who get to campus already burned out from stressful high schools.
Most schools are reporting increasing numbers of students seeking counseling, and more freshmen arrive already taking psychiatric medications.
Some of those increases come because students today are more likely to report problems and ask for help and schools are more likely to offer and promote counseling.
