By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 21, 2005
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.
But psychiatric drugs such as Prozac that popped up in the 1980s and '90s have changed the culture of campus life; they've made it possible for many teenagers who wouldn't have made it to college in the past to get in.
In the past 25 years or so, Kadison said, the likelihood of suffering depression on campus has doubled, serious thoughts about committing suicide have tripled and sexual assaults have quadrupled.
Now, one in 10 students seriously considers suicide in college. Nearly half get so depressed that they can't function, according to the American College Health Association, and every year, about 1,400 college students die from injuries related to drinking alcohol.
Georgetown's Olson emanates calm. He's a tall, easygoing midwesterner with photos of his young children scattered around his office and construction-paper turtles taped to the wall.
He laughs easily, listens carefully and takes the long view: His job is to ensure that those things that happen outside the classroom -- which many believe are the most powerful part of the college experience, the most important, the most enduring -- are as good as they can be.
He doesn't worry about every little prank and crazy stunt that students dream up. Experimentation and risk-taking and laughing at authority are part of growing up and figuring life out, he said. But, sometimes colleges do have to set rules that seem ridiculous to students -- such as no candles in dorm rooms -- because of the potential danger.
At a morning meeting, staff members gave updates on emergency plans, on how jammed the health clinic has been. They asked for volunteers to staff the mechanical bull at a spring celebration.
Later, Olson and the residence life director walked to a dorm, as they sometimes do to check in on things. No one had sprayed the fire extinguishers at the performing-arts dorm for months, and freshman Janet Orrock was ladling batter into a pan in the dorm kitchen, baking rainbow-chip cupcakes for her chemistry teaching assistant.
Back in his office, Olson had another meeting, talking about hiring and about a student who was threatened with a knife at a nearby pizza place. All day, as he stepped into elevators, people gave him updates about a senior who had had surgery that morning. They get to know many students, especially leaders, very well; that afternoon, senior Ben Cote came in asking Olson for advice on an overseas scholarship and hugged him goodbye.
At the spelling bee that night to raise money for tutoring in District schools, a crowd gathered to cheer contestants through the toughies. Olson walked onstage to get his first word.
"Hallucinogen," the judge said.
Olson looked at the judge. Everyone laughed.
It was Thursday night. Somewhere on campus, candles were flickering in a dorm room. Some students were surely flipping out over finals. Others were well on their way to sloppy drunk. But for a while at least, college life was as good as it looks in the brochures.
Nothing to worry about.