UW-Madison Hires New Mental Health Counselors and Three Will be Exclusively for Students of Color
“clients are more satisfied with counseling when it is provided by a counselor who is culturally responsive”
Imagine if instead of mental health counselors, this story was about drinking fountains. Would that still be OK?
The College Fix reports:
UW-Madison hires three mental health providers to ‘exclusively serve students of color’
The University of Wisconsin Madison has hired nine new mental health providers, three of whom “will exclusively serve students of color, joining eight providers already in this role,” campus officials recently announced.
The hires were made in “response to a need to improve access to mental health services,” campus leaders stated in a Sept. 9 news release.
Campus spokeswoman Meredith McGlone told The College Fix via email that research shows “clients are more satisfied with counseling when it is provided by a counselor who is culturally responsive.”
The campus statement noted that in “addition to increasing access to services, the new providers will enhance programming across campus aimed to support BIPOC-identified students.”
The BIPOC acronym stands for Black, Indigenous, People of Color.
Of the remaining new hires, four “will serve as generalists which are counselors who see clients with a wide range of concerns rather than a specific population.”
“Finally, the two additional new providers will serve as care managers, working closely with students who may need support in finding resources both at UHS and in the Madison community,” the announcement said.
Mental Health Services has 55 providers on staff, and during the 2020-21 academic year saw more than 25,000 patient visits, according to the news release.
“The new providers represent a diverse mix of clinical social workers, counselors, and psychologists, each with a special interest in meeting the growing demand for mental health services on campus,” it added.
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Comments
More segregation. This racist action implies that “students of color” somehow need more hand-holding to make it through college.
Considering that Indians (from India) and Asians do better than Whites in college and have higher average incomes than Whites, I don’t think this is true.
Oh, come on. “Students of color” translates to “blacks”. Period. I don’t think Hispanics are buying into this nonsense anymore.
This seems to be one of those “if this goes on” moments in that if schools can treat students (and undoubtedly faculty) different depending on race it seems difficult to see where this will ever stop.
To state the obvious (?), this seems a manifest violation of Equal Protection. Will no court ever require that schools (including private ones) cease to perpetrate these violations?
“clients are more satisfied with counseling when it is provided by a counselor who is culturally responsive”
But is he, really? Assuming he’s a licensed medical professional, and not (say) merely a Doctoral Shaman of Gender Studies, he’s no more a part of the prevailing black culture than Larry Elder.
But he black.
And that’s all that matters on the bottom line.
There is nothing stated that “self-identified” minority students will be automatically assigned to these three counselors. Conversely, are the employment agreements of these three individuals flexible so that if the self-identified minority workload fails to materialize or drops off, it will be easy to terminate the unneeded professionals?
Madison WI is a large city and a state capital. However, there are many higher ed campuses located in small towns that have a historically overwhelmingly white population. The demand that black medical professionals be hired to serve black students is problemati, because many black professionals prefer to live in a more urban, diverse location.