In 2020, a task force handed the Cornell University administration a 34-page Mental Health Review Final Report containing 130 core and sub recommendations for improving support for student mental health and well-being on the Ithaca campus. Five years later, Cornell has failed to present a full account to the Cornell or Ithaca communities of how it handled those recommendations as it had pledged to do.

Cornell University campus

Our daughter Sophie ’14 died by suicide in Ithaca in March 2016 during a health leave of absence from Cornell. We wrote to Cornell University President Martha Pollack in April 2017 asking her to commission a task force for a comprehensive review of Cornell’s policies and practices related to student mental health.

In our letter, we observed “systemic failure” in Cornell’s mental health policy and practice affecting areas such as suicide prevention, mental health counseling, and sexual violence. We wrote that we witnessed “an institutional mindset reflecting complacency and defensiveness that appears to prioritize Cornell’s public image over the welfare of students struggling with mental disorders.”

In January 2018 Pollack rejected our request. But in September 2018, she announced the establishment of a Mental Health Review (MHR) after graduate and undergraduate student organizations petitioned the administration to launch a review.

The MHR task force began its work in Fall 2019. As we had requested, the task force was led by external experts, including Michael Hogan, a former New York State mental health commissioner and a widely recognized expert in suicide prevention.

In April 2020, the task force handed the Cornell administration a report on its comprehensive review, which called for “culture change” and made recommendations for improvements in areas such as mental health and medical services, academic policies, student well-being, and proactive support for struggling students.

The task force characterized recommendations as “immediate,” requiring “limited time and resources”; “intermediate,” which “may take a year or more to achieve”; and “aspirational”—“goals that involve a significant investment of staff time and financial resources, or long-term culture shift.”

When making the report public in October 2020, a six-month delay owing to campus focus on responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, Cornell announced the creation of a seven-member Executive Accountability Committee.

The committee’s four “executive sponsors” and three “change leads” would evaluate and work toward implementing the MHR report’s “robust series of recommendations” in three key areas—academic community, campus community and clinical services.

A statement from the committee posted to the Cornell Health webpage announced: “Progress Updates will be provided by members of the Executive Accountability Committee at the end of each academic semester. Updates will include progress toward specific recommendations from the Mental Health Review.”

The MHR task force had recommended “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 Sophie Fund, which we established in 2016 as a nonprofit advocacy organization supporting mental health initiatives for young people in the greater Ithaca community, commended the task force’s recommendations and the Cornell administration’s commitment to a transparent process for implementing them. We publicly thanked Pollack and Vice President for Student & Campus Life Ryan Lombardi for “recognizing the need for continuous attention to student mental health.”

Over the next two years, however, the Executive Accountability Committee provided sparse and incomplete updates on the implementation progress. In 2022, Cornell halted the specific recommendations updates and disbanded the Executive Accountability Committee.

In October 2022, Pollack announced that Cornell had adopted the international Okanagan Charter and launched a “Health Promoting Campus” initiative.

Cornell administrators said that responsibility for the MHR recommendations and campus mental health policies and practices would now fall to a 25-member Student Well-Being Council (and its six subcommittees) under a “campus-wide Community of Practice.”

On April 30, we asked Pollack’s successor, President Michael Kotlikoff, “to provide a report to the Cornell and Ithaca communities on the status of the 60 core recommendations (130 including sub-recommendations).”

In a letter to Kotlikoff, we wrote that such a report “will illustrate the concrete improvements deserving of recognition that have been made over the past five years as the result of the review commissioned by President Pollack. It will highlight the areas where work still needs to be done, and how Cornell intends to proceed in those areas. Finally, transparently fulfilling a commitment to hold itself accountable will enhance confidence and respect in how Cornell is supporting its students’ well-being and acting as a responsible and valued part of the greater community.”

Kotlikoff declined our request, which was repeated in a series of four further email exchanges in May, June, and July. He explained that Cornell has moved on from a focus on the MHR recommendations in favor of the “Health Promoting Campus” initiative.

On May 7, Kotlikoff wrote:

“Cornell adopted the Okanagan Charter in 2022. This commitment is the next phase of our Mental Health Review, representing a holistic approach focused on promoting health across all aspects of our campus. Through this commitment, we have made significant strides in enhancing support: mental health and well-being have been complemented by policy changes aimed at fostering a supportive environment for our students, guidelines to make policies more health-promoting, embedding well-being into classroom settings, and continuing to provide training to students, staff, and faculty in how to identify individuals in distress.”

Thanking us for our “continued advocacy on behalf of student mental health and well-being in the Cornell and greater Ithaca communities,” Kotlikoff wrote on May 29:

“Since the publication of the Mental Health Review Final Report in 2020, Cornell has made significant progress in implementing in full or part many of the recommendations outlined in the report, as was shared via reports published through October 2022. However, because the landscape of student needs, service delivery, and institutional priorities has shifted dramatically in light of the profound changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, other recommendations have necessarily evolved or been reconsidered. These shifts led Cornell to move from a focus on meeting MHR recommendations to the October 2022 adoption of the Okanagan Charter and launch of the Health Promoting Campus initiative.”

On July 15, Kotlikoff wrote that Cornell has adopted “a much more rigorous assessment and evaluation approach to our work.” He shared that a publication, authored by a Cornell health administrator, “has revealed marked improvement via a simultaneous increase of student flourishing and substantial decreases in levels of students’ anxiety, depression, and psychological distress.”

Kotlikoff, though responding promptly and with courtesy to our emails, did not agree to our request to meet with him to discuss our concerns in person, referring us instead to subordinates in the Cornell administration.

Our current concerns about student mental health at Cornell go beyond the status of the MHR recommendations, as we wrote in our initial letter to President Kotlikoff on April 30.

We said that our concerns include the constant turnover and lengthy gaps in filling key positions at Cornell Health, which we said “raise questions about the administration’s commitment to ensuring robust and consistent leadership for student mental health.”

From our April 30 letter:

“In early 2020, the university created a new position of Assistant Vice President of Student & Campus Life for Health and Well-Being who would be responsible for overseeing student mental health and well-being on the clinical side of Cornell Health and importantly on the academic side of Cornell’s various schools. The AVP was put in charge of supervising implementation of recommendations in the MHR Report, which she declared “underscores the need for significant culture change at Cornell.” At the end of 2021, the AVP announced her resignation citing “all-consuming and exhausting” work that included leading the university’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Despite the critical importance of this particular leadership role for student mental health and well-being and specifically for implementing the MHR recommendations, the Cornell administration left this AVP position leading a 200-person staff vacant for two and a half years until finally promoting an internal applicant in mid-2024. Cornell Health has now had three directors in six years.

“Cornell Health’s Counseling & Psychological Services, which provides essential day-to-day clinical support for Cornell’s students, has also seen three directors in six years, with the most recent director leaving the position just weeks into the current academic year with no permanent replacement appointed thus far seven months later.

“Another key unit, Cornell’s Skorton Center for Health Initiatives, has likewise had three directors in the past four years. As you of course are aware, the Skorton Center is charged with directing campus public health education and training programs for issues such as mental health, alcohol and drug addiction, sexual assault, hazing, and suicide prevention.”

By Scott MacLeod and Susan Hack

Scott MacLeod and Susan Hack are co-founders of The Sophie Fund, established in memory of their daughter Sophie, who died by suicide in Ithaca during a health leave of absence from Cornell.