Some upbeat depression material from U. Michigan.We often get into arguments on this blog's comment section about whether or not colleges are representative or not. Generally these debates center on race, but why should we be confined to only to race? What about mental illness? Should we have proportional representative of the mentally ill?
Pomona's Dean of Admission Bruce Poch admits that there is a gray zone when he's deciding whether or not to admit a student will mental illness. He says in U.S. News and World Report.
Smith [College] and other schools acknowledge that making judgments about
character is sometimes a messy process. It doesn't involve precise measures
like SAT scores or grade-point average. "In some cases, you say, 'This makes
me nervous,' and maybe it is an intuition and some reasonable people would disagree, but it goes with the territory," says Bruce Poch, dean of
admissions at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.
I have mixed feelings on the issue of letting people with depression into college. On the one hand, if the person who has been admitted turns out to be a real sociopath, maybe we want the college admissions officer to use their discretion.
On the other hand, colleges receive public funds and it seems kind of arbitrary to rely upon the standards of the dean of admissions.
Contrary to what many think about this blog, I'm sometimes unsure of things. What do you think? Should we bar the depressed? What standard would you use?
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4 comments:
"I have mixed feelings on the issue of letting people with depression into college. On the one hand, if the person who has been admitted turns out to be a real sociopath, maybe we want the college admissions officer to use their discretion."
Depression and sociopathy(better known as psychopathy) are two completely different mental, and to link the two has the potential to seriously offend those who suffer from depression. I'm sure you probably didn't intend to link the two, but you should be a little more careful about the terms you use.
As for letting people with depression into college, I don't see any valid reason for not letting them in. Colleges should be looking at the academic performance of students, not the mental illnesses they have. If a student has depression but still demonstrates academic excellence, there should be no reason to exclude that student from the opportunity at higher learning. They made no choice in becoming depressed, and it would be patently unfair to exclude an otherwise acceptable student from a school based off of a medical condition.
Patrick,
I was not conflating the two at all. And just for the record, the classification of the two is very difficult for most people to distinguish, especially an admissions dean.
I am glad that you agree academic performance should be the determinant.
Does that mean that you are also against racist admissions policies?
If your asking me about my views on affirmative action (which I think is a safe assumption to make based on your previous posts) then I would have to back out. I'm a bit on the fence concerning affirmative action, and don't think I would be able to contribute much to a debate on the subject. Besides, haven't you had enough of that debate already?
As for the depression/sociopathy link, I wasn't suggesting that you purposely conflated the two, merely that the wording you chose suggested a link between the two when no such link exists. I'll grant that you likely understand the difference between the two, but the wording could have perhaps been chosen far better.
Patrick, you said "As for letting people with depression into college, I don't see any valid reason for not letting them in."
Because the courts have started deciding that if students commit suicide while at college, because of depression, the school can be held liable. Being someone who suffers from depression I don't think that should stop them, but there you have it.
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