Cornell’s Mental Health Review: Final Report

The Cornell University administration on October 22 released the Final Report of a nearly year-long Mental Health Review that contains 60 recommendations comprehensively calling for improvements in mental health and medical services, academic life, student well-being, and mental health awareness and proactive support.

Download: Cornell University’s Mental Health Review Final Report

The administration at the same time announced the formation of a high-level Executive Accountability Committee, led by senior academic officials as well as senior administrators overseeing student affairs and Cornell Health, to evaluate and prioritize the recommendations.

The 34-page report’s recommendations include a mix of specific suggestions and identification of areas for further review. The report cited a need for upgrading psychological counseling services, but also strongly argued that fully supporting student mental health requires significant changes in academic policies and practices.

“Cornell, like its peer schools, must rethink what it means for students to strive for excellence, and design an enhanced version of excellence, which has as its foundation a healthy educational environment,” the report stated.

“While treatment offered by counseling centers can benefit students directly through symptom relief, increased levels of academic and social functioning, and increased retention and graduation rates, improving mental health requires a degree of culture change, which must be a university wide effort,” the report said.

“Students maintain a culture of competition in the curricular, co-curricular, and social spheres, which normalizes course and extra-curricular overloads that can become a detriment to physical and mental health,” the report’s authors wrote. “We have observed that the culture of competition may take on an unhealthy cycle of expectation and behavior that can reach traumatizing levels for students, faculty, and staff.”

The report expressed concern about the health and well-being of faculty and staff, and about the impact that increasing expectations has on their well-being and on their ability to support students. The report said the issue warrants continued attention but noted it was outside the scope of the review that was focused on student mental health.

The review was conducted during the 2019–20 academic year by a task force appointed in mid-2019 that included three experts from outside the university as well as faculty, staff, and students from the campus community. The task force submitted its Final Report in April just as the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic was disrupting education at Cornell and on campuses across the country.

The review examined challenges affecting Cornell’s undergraduate student population as well as its graduate and professional students (numbering 14,743, 6,239, and 2,638, respectively, in Fall 2020). It included two campus surveys, 37 focus groups, five Telling Stories workshops, six World Café large-group dialogues, and meetings with undergraduate and graduate students, deans and faculty members, senior staff members, and campus healthcare providers. Additionally, the task force met with off-campus therapists and community mental health organizations. The task force also reviewed Cornell Health data, and examined mental health reviews conducted at other colleges and more than 70 student well-being programs and initiatives.

The 13-member internal Mental Health Review Committee, which included five students, was headed by Marla Love, senior associate dean of students, and Miranda Swanson, associate dean for student services in the College of Engineering. The External Review Team consisted of Michael Hogan, a former commissioner of mental health for New York State, Ohio, and Connecticut (chair); Karen Singleton, chief of Mental Health and Counseling Services at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MIT Medical; and Henry Chung, senior medical director of care management organization at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

The report highlighted one “overarching recommendation” to sustain the complex challenge of improving student mental health: “Creation of a widely representative permanent committee on mental health to ensure the implementation of immediate recommendations, and to monitor progress and conduct further review of those recommendations that will require more time and resources to enact.”

The External Review Team members stressed the importance of establishing a permanent committee on mental health “to act as a steward of this cause” in an April 15 report transmittal letter to Vice President for Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi. “An issue like mental health, which touches so many and is affected by every aspect of university life, requires consistent attention and a centralized effort across the university,” they wrote.

Hogan, Singleton, and Chung also cited the “distinctive role” the Cornell administration must play in implementing the recommendations. “Mental health must be championed at the highest levels of leadership in order for students, faculty, and staff to have the confidence to act,” they wrote.

The plea echoed the report’s introduction, which stated in part: “The recommendations that emerged from this process must be addressed and ongoing change led at an institutional level to ensure that mental health and wellbeing is valued and embedded in the culture of the university.”

Medical and Mental Health Services

In its assessments and recommendations, the report recognized Cornell’s history in the collegiate mental health field, and commended Cornell for providing “whole person,” or “integrated,” mental health care through Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and Cornell Health’s primary care services.

The report noted “significant recent changes” to improve access to mental health services. These included the hiring of additional staff—according to the report, the number of budgeted fulltime CAPS therapists increased from about 28 in 2018 to about 38 in 2020.

The changes also included the adoption of a new service-delivery model in Fall 2019, which enabled 25-minute initial outpatient sessions virtually on demand, and offers students greater flexibility in choosing their therapists and scheduling appointments. “The approach has already led to increased utilization, significant reductions in wait times, and decreased referral to community therapists,” the report said.

With the recent changes, there is not currently a need for significant staff increases or expanded access to services, the report said. Yet, if access and quality of care cannot be sustained, the report added, future increases in CAPS clinical staff may be required.

The report said that student feedback indicated a strong preference for long-term, weekly 50-minute psychotherapy sessions at CAPS. However, the review concluded that such a practice was not justified based on research evidence about the effectiveness of specific psychotherapies as well as current practices in insurance coverage.

“This is not to say that there is no benefit to long term counseling,” the report explained. “Clinics and insurance plans encourage individuals desiring such care to seek and pay for it on their own, so that available resources are used to benefit the entire community, and can be focused especially on those with immediate and serious concerns.”

Nonetheless, the report stated that “continued improvements in the professional medical and mental health services at Cornell are necessary… [involving] a continuing, long-term quality improvement process, not a quick fix.”

The report called for continued efforts to balance increased demand for mental health services as well as medical services with “finite resources.” The report urged improvement efforts including measuring outcomes, working with data, sustaining staff quality, and measuring patient satisfaction and concerns.

The report specifically recommended that Cornell require annual professional development training for all clinical staff on topics including suicidal patients, risk management, and multicultural competency and threat assessment; create a patient advocate/ombudsman for students to register complaints and positive feedback; utilize the Zero Suicide Model self-study to determine needed improvements in suicide prevention; utilize best practices tools to provide optimal care for underserved populations such as LGBTQ+ students; develop a framework for mental health patient access and continuity of care; improve integrated mental health care; consider refocusing the “Let’s Talk” mental health outreach service on underserved students; consider consultation with the International Accreditation of Counseling Services to benchmark against other collegiate mental health services; and consider hiring a sports psychologist to address the particular needs of student athletes.

Healthy Educational Environment

Noting there is “much to celebrate” about Cornell’s educational environment, the Mental Health Review nonetheless made significant recommendations for addressing the “toxic effects” that Cornell’s academic and social culture can have on student well-being and achievement.

“Multiple measures indicate that the mental health needs of students have increased significantly in recent years,” the report stated. It cited Cornell PULSE/CUE surveys indicating that the proportion of undergraduates who reported that they were unable to function academically—missing classes, unable to study or complete homework, etc.—for at least a week in the past year due to depression, stress, or anxiety increased from 33 percent in 2015 to 42 percent in 2019. From Fall 2015 to Fall 2018, individual CAPS therapy encounters increased by 19 percent, the report added.

The report broadly pointed to pedagogical innovations that could play a role in decreasing student stress and anxiety, such as multiple and varied means of grading and evaluation, academic credit limits, and flexible timing in exam administration. The report recommended approaches to “foster community, collaboration, and autonomy” in academic and co-curricular life. The report also identified the need for increased “multicultural competency and fluency” and financial aid solutions addressing inequities to reduce stressors across Cornell’s changing racial, ethic, socioeconomic, and gender demographics. The report cited a need to address student stress over career prospects and graduate school admission.

The report specifically recommended that Cornell create a centralized mechanism for institutional oversight of academic policies and practices that negatively affect student mental health. It called for the mechanism to work closely with college/school leadership and faculty across Cornell to examine eight issues: grading on a curve; Pass/Fail grading for first-year students and certain types of classes for all students; academic work during scheduled breaks; credit limits; attendance policies, especially as related to mental health; workload outside of class; pre-enrollment syllabi availability; and mandatory meetings with advisors.

Cornell should address problems around prelim [mid-term exam] scheduling, raise the profile of advising as a critical component of student success, launch a uniform course feedback instrument, and encourage academic departments to conduct self-studies to identify key stressors for students and mitigation strategies for them, the report said.

The report called for mandatory mental health training for every faculty member and staff member at least once every two years, and said Cornell should encourage faculty to model and discuss behaviors that promote mental health in their course orientation lectures and initial meetings.

The report singled out Cornell’s graduate students, who play dual roles as students as well as teaching assistants (TAs), for requiring special attention. “Graduate students feel particularly vulnerable within Cornell’s rigorous yet loosely structured academic environment,” the report said. “Financial independence, loneliness and isolation, power differentials with faculty and mentors, work-life balance, and ambiguity and vulnerability in advisor/advisee relationships, seem to intensify stress in the graduate student experience.”

The report said that graduate students as well as professional students face special challenges related to social connectedness, work-life balance, and resilience. Classes, research, employment, and job searches limit the time they have to engage in activities that reduce stress, the report said. Moreover, it added, they tend to have few social connections outside of peers in their labs or programs, with whom they are often in competition for jobs and resources.

The report listed five proposals for addressing concerns raised by graduate students: train TAs in mental health and resilience so they can support their undergraduate students as well as self-manage their own well-being; create clear and consistent standards for PhD degree completion; develop a mechanism for reporting and acting on problematic thesis advisors; develop a template for documenting expectations when selecting an advising committee chair; and train new faculty advisors and graduate students in developing positive mentor/mentee relationships.

Social Connectedness and Resilience

Acknowledging benefits like diverse academic offerings, research opportunities, and a beautiful campus, the report nonetheless argued that “Cornell’s competitive environment, complex structure, and physical layout compound feelings of isolation… [C]ompetition and a culture of achievement at all costs pervade the academic and social environments and hinder social connections.”

The report cited factors such as a campus social life that is heavily dominated by fraternities and sororities, where hazing, sexual assault, and alcohol abuse are perennial problems; competitive application processes for club membership and leadership positions; lack of free and convenient fitness facilities; and Ithaca’s long, cold winters.

The report called for a centralized, campus-wide strategy, with substantial, personal, and sustained support from Cornell leaders, to live up to Cornell’s “Caring Community” slogan and promote messages and means for social connectedness and mutual support.

According to the report, the university has undertaken a series of substantive reforms to address hazing, sexual assault, and alcohol misuse in the Greek Letter community; the report said the review team members “strongly endorse these important and challenging steps as key aspects of supporting campus wide mental health.”

The report specifically recommended that Cornell establish a high-level task force to develop a campus-wide strategy for student well-being; foster stronger competence in new students for managing college transition; explore mental health training for campus housing Residence Assistants (RAs); expand outreach support to international students, transfer students, first generation students, veterans, and other vulnerable populations; expand opportunities for physical fitness and prioritize fundraising for fitness facilities; regulate application-based student organizations; incentivize student organizations to offer well-being programming; improve sense of belonging for students in campus housing; promote alcohol-free activities and night programming; expand campus and off-campus spaces for programming and social interaction; and establish a task force to promote Cornell pride and create new traditions.

Help-Seeking Behavior and People in Need of Care

Student demand for mental health services at Cornell exceeds expected use, according to the report. Yet, it said, students still express reluctance to seek mental health care. Among the reasons cited by students were lack of time, cultural aversion to help-seeking, negative experiences with help-seeking, confidentiality concerns, perceptions that their symptoms were “not bad enough,” and that “everyone is stressed” at Cornell.

The report said that while it is critical that all members of the university community play a part in recognizing and responding to students in distress and to those who could benefit from proactive intervention, faculty, staff, and students all expressed uncertainty about their roles and abilities to do so.

The report made 10 recommendations for promoting help-seeking behaviors. Among them: develop a single comprehensive source of information about health, mental health, and well-being; ensure all new students receive information about recognizing mental illness and support resources; use orientation materials to equip parents to recognize signs of distress, reduce stigma, and encourage help-seeking behavior; create a pre-departure guide for international students with information about arrival logistics, finances, the academic system, and mental health; implement a mental health awareness campaign; create a social media platform where faculty, staff, and students can model help-seeking behavior through sharing personal experiences; develop a comprehensive strategy for mitigating the intersection of mental health and alcohol use; and establish a protocol for students to notify faculty of health or well-being issues that affect attendance or work completion.

For identifying and supporting students in need the report made seven specific recommendations, including: improve the experience for students taking, being on, and returning from Health Leaves of Absence; increase the number of sexual victim advocates; improve the system for handling “Students of Concern”; develop a “Big Red Folder” as a quick reference guide for all faculty, staff, TAs, and RAs to assist students in distress; and increase staff resources at the Skorton Center for Health Initiatives to offer enhanced mental health training for faculty and staff.

Executive Accountability Committee

According to the Cornell Chronicle, the seven-member Executive Accountability Committee will oversee three teams focused on “implementing efforts in key areas – academic community, campus community and clinical services.” The committee is being led by Vice President Ryan Lombardi; Kathryn Boor, dean of the Cornell Graduate School and vice provost for graduate education; Lisa Nishii, vice provost for undergraduate education; and Sharon McMullen, assistant vice president of student and campus life for health and well-being.

“Moving forward to implement change will require careful reevaluation of our university priorities as well as changes within our policies and systems,” Boor said in an October 22 article in the Chronicle. “Implementing key recommendations will help to improve the well-being of our community, and more specifically, the well-being of our undergraduate, graduate and professional students.”

In September 2018, the Office of President Martha E. Pollack published a plan for a comprehensive review of student mental health services. Lombardi shared the decision in an email to students; and, in an email to the Cornell Daily Sun,said it “reflects the University’s commitment to promoting health and well-being as a foundation for academic and personal success.”

Throughout 2018, undergraduate students and graduate students separately formed task forces to lobby the university administration for improved mental health support and services.

In an April 2017 letter, Scott MacLeod and Susan Hack, who founded The Sophie Fund after their daughter Sophie, a Cornell student, died by suicide in 2016, called on the Cornell president to “establish an independent, external-led task force on student mental health without delay to review and assess the mental health challenges for Cornell students and the university’s policies, programs, and practices to address them, and to make recommendations to the Cornell president to ensure that the university is adopting and implementing current best practices.” They repeated the request in August 2018.

Responding in a letter on September 20, 2018, Pollack said that Cornell would conduct a “comprehensive review” and thanked MacLeod and Hack “for your advocacy for providing the best possible environment to support the mental health of Cornell students.”

The Sophie Fund gave a presentation with 22 recommendations last January 15 to the Mental Health Review teams.

DOWNLOAD: THE CORNELL UNIVERSITY MENTAL HEALTH REVIEW FINAL REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS AT A GLANCE

Download: Cornell University’s Mental Health Review Final Report

A Mother’s Movement Against Bullying

Jane Clementi is the founder of the Tyler Clementi Foundation, which works to end online and offline bullying in schools, workplaces, and faith communities. She started the advocacy organization in 2011 to honor her son, Tyler. He died by suicide at age 18 in the first month of his freshman year at Rutgers University. Among the foundation’s programs is the Million Upstander Movement, in which enlistees pledge to stand up to bullying and treat others with kindness, respect, and compassion. The Sophie Fund’s Anna Moura spoke to Jane Clementi via Zoom on October 28, 2020.

Tyler and Jane Clementi [Courtesy Jane Clementi]

THE SOPHIE FUND: What drove you to create the Tyler Clementi Foundation?

JANE CLEMENTI: It was in the wake of my son’s death. He died by suicide in the fall of 2010 after he had been just started his freshman year. His roommate live-streamed him in a sexual encounter with another man. And then, as he read the comments and quotes on social media, his reality became twisted and distorted, and he made that permanent decision to a very temporary situation, and he died by suicide. It was to honor his legacy.

There were several high-profile deaths in the fall of 2010, but Tyler’s seemed to rise even up to the top of those and his story held national headlines for several weeks after that. Several noted celebrities continued to talk about Tyler over the course of time. As my fog lifted from the extreme distress that I was in after Tyler’s death, I realized that there was a lot of good positive conversation that was happening, and that those conversations were helping to create change, to make life better for other LGBTQ youth as well as just other marginalized youth that were being targeted.

I wanted to make sure that the world knew more about Tyler and the kind, caring, resourceful young man that he actually was. I also have come in years since to realize how distressed he truly was as well. I recently moved, within the last six months, and I came across more writings that Tyler had documented some of his pain and sadness and anger. It was someone I didn’t even recognize. I had no idea. So not everyone exhibits symptoms of their pain.

THE SOPHIE FUND: How do you define the problem of bullying?

JANE CLEMENTI: I think it’s a complex issue with a complex array of solutions. I think it’s helpful for us to share our stories so that people are aware of the great consequences and harm that can be caused from bullying behavior. I like to make sure people know that not all bullying situations end in the same devastating way that Tyler’s story ended. But with that said, all bullying hurts when it is happening, and it often leaves lifelong scars, whether physical or emotional, psychological scars.

I also think it is an issue that needs our constant attention and immediate attention. I don’t think it’s “kids just being kids.” I don’t think it magically disappears when someone turns 18. It’s behavior that goes on uncorrected and unchallenged. We have to identify that behavior early—the earlier, the better—to make change. Legislation is important, but I think it’s just a small component of creating change. I think most legislation sets the boundaries, which I think is key and important, but after that once the boundaries are crossed, it is very punitive. It mostly deals with punishment or suspension. I don’t think that that changes the behavior. I think we need to implement more behavior modification, and maybe reward positive behavior and call out positive behavior as part of the solution.

We are working preventing bullying online and off, as well as in schools, workplaces, and faith communities. Because I think it happens not only to youth, and not only in schools, but also through legislative inequalities as well as religious dogma that targets especially those in the LGBTQ community. We can go further down to the root of the cause and that will help prevent it for other people.

THE SOPHIE FUND: What can we really do to make an impact on bullying behavior?

JANE CLEMENTI: We have a few initiatives ourselves with the Tyler Clementi Foundation that we think will impact that behavior. First of all, we think it’s important to realize that there’s more than just the target and the aggressor in a bullying situation. But there are bystanders. Almost all situations have bystanders, people who see what’s happening. And those are bystanders because they’re passive and remain silent. That is like condoning and supporting the aggressive behavior. So, we want to empower those bystanders, and we call them “upstanders” once they become empowered. We think that there are many ways to do that.

You can intervene and interrupt a situation if you feel comfortable and if you know the people involved. Because we never ever want anyone else to come into harm’s way. Sometimes it’s as easy as, if you know the people and maybe think they are using racial slurs or homophobic slurs as jest or some type of humor—which they are not—and calling it out and saying that this isn’t funny.

It might even be as simple as coming beside the person being targeted and calling them away and pulling them physically out of the situation, saying, “Come with me, I want to show you something I saw outside, or down the hall,” or whatever.

If you don’t feel comfortable in that situation, or if the behavior doesn’t get changed, it’s about reporting it to a trusted adult or a youth. Or reporting it to the proper people if it’s happening in the workplace, up your ladder, your chain of command, your human resources department, something to that effect.

If you have someone’s best interest at heart, it is not tattling, or telling on someone. It’s about finding them the right support, which takes us to the third easiest way. That is to reach out to the target. I think that that is important. I think if someone had reached out to Tyler, it would have made all the difference for him. Making sure they know where their resources are. Tyler had resources at Rutgers, and he had resources at home. But no one made sure he knew how to reach out. And when you’re in a really dark place, and I learned personally, you don’t often see your resources. You just see the pain and the bleakness. So reaching out to the target, making sure, sometimes it’s just about making sure they know you’re there, you’re a friend. I think those are key elements of being an upstander.

We also believe that its more than just a one-on-one but about creating safe communities as well. We believe that someone, if they say on a first day of a group meeting together, whether it’s a sports team, or a club, or a classroom, or an entire school, having a person of authority set the boundaries, and say that we value everyone here, we will not accept anybody being targeted or humiliated for any reason. And then calling out and enumerating the reasons. Such as body shape and size, or abilities, or what language they speak at home, or their sexual orientation, or their gender identity, or whatever else makes somebody special and precious.

We do think people are targeted because of their differences, and we need to enumerate those differences so people understand that, and then get an acknowledgement back from the group that, yes, they understand. It is not a magic wand. The aggressor needs to hear where the boundaries are sometimes. It is also a huge message for someone who is marginalized to hear, to know that they are welcome and included in this space regardless of whatever makes them special.

THE SOPHIE FUND: Tell us about the “Upstander Pledge”?

JANE CLEMENTI: We started it several years ago. We wanted to reach a million people with our upstander pledge by October of 2020, and I’m pleased to say that we did just reach a million people. We’re really thrilled about that announcement, but we also know that a million people sounds like a lot, but it still needs to reach more. So we are going to continue our message.  It is also a message that needs to be heard over and over again.

Every time you are faced with a situation, it’s not like, “Oh, I signed the pledge, I’m good.” You have to really think about it. One of the things I’ve learned is that there is something called the bystander phenomenon. The more people that see an incident happening the less likely that somebody is to stand up to that incident. That’s why we need to have it fresh on our mind: “Wait a minute, nobody is saying anything. That’s me. I need to be that person that stands in the gap. I need to be the person to be empowered enough, and to have the courage enough, to stand up here.” And then hopefully you’ll be the leader to create a wave of people that will stand up to that.

THE SOPHIE FUND: How does the foundation’s work specifically impact LGBTQ youth?

JANE CLEMENTI: Our mission is broad in that it speaks to anyone’s difference. With that said, I think that allows us to speak specifically where we go and where we are invited in to talk. We are not quite as problematic for some schools or for some businesses that might not be able to or want to invite, say, GLSEN, or GLAAD, or HRC. And yet, for us, that is a huge focus of our work because that is part of Tyler’s story. Tyler was a gay youth, so we can speak to that. We have a gentle way of bringing that conversation to the organization that we are speaking in.

THE SOPHIE FUND: How do you view the problem of cyberbullying?

JANE CLEMENTI: With Covid we are spending so much more of our time in the digital cyber world, so the incidences of cyber-attack or bullying are so much greater. We have to be sure and think about the words that we’re using, and say the words that are building other people up and not attacking their character. I think it’s important that we see the humanity behind something and being willing to back up whatever we say by saying it to someone’s face, not saying it just through words on a screen.

THE SOPHIE FUND: Can you talk about the Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act?

JANE CLEMENTI: A little history. It was created and introduced into the Senate initially by the New Jersey’s senator at the time, which was Senator Frank Lautenberg. He realized a truth which I still see today, that there is no federal anti-bullying legislation at all. Since Tyler was a college student, he initiated the bill to speak to colleges and universities, higher education institutions, to create policies and programs to protect all their students.

In 2010, in the fall, there were very few state laws for anti-bullying. I think New Jersey instituted one of the first. New Jersey’s law is called HIB—Harassment, Intimidation, and Bullying. That passed shortly after Tyler’s death. At this point, all 50 states have some form of anti-bullying legislation. Which also means each state has a different definition of what bullying is. There are 50 different definitions out there. And so I do think we do need a federal law.

There are several that are out there. The two that are most known are the Safe Schools Act, which would be K-12, and that is supported by the Human Rights Campaign, and several other organizations. And then there’s theTyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act. That is also supported by HRC and a few less organizations than the Safe Schools Act. But it does not seem to get passed legislatively. Maybe with the new Congress we can get that moving forward.

THE SOPHIE FUND: What do you think is needed specifically in higher education?

JANE CLEMENTI: One of the things with LGBTQ support is that many colleges and higher education institutions do not have a resource person or an LGBTQ center on their college campuses. Out of 6,000 institutions, only less than 10 percent had a resource person, one FTE employee who was in charge of the resource center. So, I think that there needs to be more resource availability available through a center through a place where people can gather together and receive the support that they need.

Most institutions also need policies in place to protect all students and calling out and enumerating classes including LGBTQI+ students as well. With those policies they should have trainings for staff as well as for students. Those are components of Tyler’s bill also. Having not only policies in place but trainings for staff and students.

THE SOPHIE FUND: Can you talk a little bit about the Tyler Clementi Center at Rutgers University?

JANE CLEMENTI: We have a Memorandum of Understanding with Rutgers that created the Tyler Clementi Center at Rutgers. It falls under the inclusion and diversity chancellor. They are working towards having research and symposiums. For all marginalized students, but the last two symposiums have been specific to LGBTQ, creating safe LGBTQ spaces on the college campus. They just did a web conference, the topic was “Out of The Closet.” It was discussing the safety aspect of being in the closet against the harm of being in the closet, which usually outweighs the safety. It was about not forcing people to come out before they were ready to come out. But how to rather encourage people to see the positive aspect of being out, and the better emotional mental health of it.

The Clementi Family at Tyler’s high school graduation 2010 [Courtesy Jane Clementi]

THE SOPHIE FUND: How do you view bullying in the context of today’s divisive political scene?

JANE CLEMENTI: We never will agree with everyone completely on solutions. But I do think it is key that we learn how to have those conversations respectfully and to talk about the issues and solutions to the problems without attacking someone’s character or the person. I think that’s one of the things that we haven’t achieved very well in our political system right now. As a nonprofit, we don’t endorse any candidate at all, but we certainly need leaders that will exemplify and model good behavior for us and not call out and target and attack a person’s character but have those respectful conversations.

 Until we do, I think it definitely affects youth today. You might dismiss it, but there was a research project out of the University of Virginia that talked about the last political campaign for the last election. It showed that bullying behavior increased among youth after certain political leaders exhibited it on the television screen or their news media screen, and visualizing someone calling out news reporters for their disabilities, or calling out other people and attacking their personality.

THE SOPHIE FUND: Why did the foundation reach out to the 2020 presidential candidates to take the upstander pledge?

JANE CLEMENTI: They were going to occupy so much of our time through news, we thought it was important that the candidates, all of the candidates, would take our pledge and to live out our pledge in their campaign. We reached out in a bipartisan way to everyone running at the time, and we posted them on our website.

It is multi-faceted the answer as to why some people did not take the pledge. Obviously, it was interesting to me that all the candidates were from the Democratic Party that did sign our pledge. But even within that Democratic Party, there were some that did not take it. Some responded that they don’t sign pledges, and they don’t put their name to things that they don’t have control over. And I accept that. But we got most of the top contenders who were running which I think speaks volumes. If someone actually engages in bullying behavior, I would imagine that they wouldn’t want to sign the pledge.

THE SOPHIE FUND: How do you assess the “Be Best” initiative of First Lady Melania Trump? People have accused President Trump of engaging in bullying and not setting a “Be Best” example.

JANE CLEMENTI: I concur. I don’t think he would be the best example. I don’t think her initiative is as robust as it should be either. I see very little about it. Maybe I’m just missing it in my news area. I do know that she had one conference and I know some people who attended the conference. I didn’t even know that it was happening until after the fact. I think it was shallow at best, and I think she could have had a larger and stronger voice in this area. Although it’s very difficult when you are trying to reap change for good and one of the people involved on the other side and is occupying so much media attention is actually being the aggressor in many situations. and being the aggressor without knowing that he even is the aggressor. I have to have a good view of everyone. I can’t imagine someone wants to be an aggressor or wants to inflict cruel pain on someone else. I think sometimes it is just not even in their consciousness that they are being that type of an aggressor.

—By Anna Moura

Anna Moura, an intern at The Sophie Fund, is a Class of 2021 Writing major and Psychology minor at Ithaca College

[To learn more, check out local, state, and national resources on bullying at https://thesophiefund.org/bullying]