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Comment by Nimi | Hacker News Reader

Non-US resident here. I found the treatment of the OP appalling, but I have to ask: what's the deal with schools doing this stuff? I'm a PhD student at Tel-Aviv University, the medical services we have on campus are limited to a couple of nurses and maybe a doctor or two, for urgent cases or when you just need a band-aid. Last time I went to the medical "facility" (which is really a couple of rooms), I was told to schedule an appointment with a doctor outside the university, and that was it. So no one at the university even knows about any health issues I may have, and certainly not treats them or evaluates their severity.

Sexual harassment is indeed a problem, here as well, but again I wonder why not go to the police? At least here, it's a criminal offense. Not that students go to the police, but why don't they?

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It's a combination of multiple factors.

I go to UT Austin, which has a population size of 75,000 and basically its own city. An on site clinic is a practical measure since it's convenient and handles the simple stuff[1] for the campus body while deferring to specialists or hospitals for more complex procedures.

The clinic is paid through mandatory fees and thus "free". By comparison, visiting another clinic or doctor is less convenient and has a $10-25 copay (more if you don't have insurance).

> Sexual harassment is indeed a problem, here as well, but again I wonder why not go to the police? At least here, it's a criminal offense.

It is a criminal offense, but there is a lot of emotional fallout that the police aren't prepared to handle. Mental health and counseling services are supposed to help victims in these situations, not push them out.

[1]: List of services on page 4 (PDF): http://healthyhorns.utexas.edu/IMAGES/pdf/UHS%20Information%...

Thank you for the response. Your comment and other ones indeed explain the matter - some colleges are basically their own cities, located near a small town.

My own conclusions from this appalling story are:

1. If you're at a U.S. university and are experiencing mental difficulties - just pay the 25$ copay and see someone outside the university. Had the OP done that, Yale would have probably had no clue what was going on. Maybe someone would notice she's missing classes, maybe not even that.

2. Don't get committed. If you need to, see a therapist on your time and on your own dime. They likely won't order you to take off your underwear, spread your legs, then hop up and down to make sure nothing was hidden “up there".

Depends on the institution. MIT is incredibly committed to trying to get anyone admitted to graduate, and apparently that includes a lot of free psych services. I know students who dropped out for years and subsequently continued by simply registering and paying tuition.

To not get committed, one would have to lie about hurting oneself (which might not have been possible in this case given the visible injury). Not foolproof, but to not get committed, one should keep these thoughts to oneself. Even a trusted doctor is likely to commit one. This decision still lies purely with the doctor. The _only_ surefire way to not get committed is to not see anyone who doesn't have your best interests in mind and that includes all medical and social professions. Sad indeed.

Yes, sounds like a serious dilemma - try to get help, and you risk being committed. I have a feeling that private psychiatrists know they face a repeat game with a patient they shipped to such horrendous treatment at a ward, and thus have their finger resting much easier on the trigger. But as you said, nothing here is foolproof.

I wouldn't doubt that. Psychiatrists play some horrific games with their patients that border on criminal (and likely should be criminal). These days, a patient that is difficult is simply dealt with in the simplest possible way: drugs. If that one size fits all solution should cause problems or not work, I wouldn't put it past any psychiatrist to commit their difficult patients, especially ones with a history of problems. Most of the time, they won't even bother with a diagnosis, even after years of prescribing medicine. In many ways, it's quite scary, and undoubtedly people that need the help are not getting it while people that don't are being drugged and strung on for the psychiatrist's profit.

I think it's because Israel has free universal healthcare, so there is no problem getting medical treatment at any hospital. The situation is similar in the UK.

But, in the US the university is probably going to be providing health insurance to the students, and is therefore actually responsible for providing medical services to them.

> what's the deal with schools doing this stuff

The school didn't. They sent her to Yale-New Haven, which is a real hospital, with a real psych ward.

That's where she went through the standard "dangerous person" admission procedure that everyone is reacting to.

Hmm... so what's the deal with the, for lack of better terms, ex-parte hearing Yale put her through?

If the hospital is an unrelated medical institution, how did her medical history get released to the school? Is this even legal?

Also, IIUC, the psychiatrist who told her "we can't have you here" was employed at the hospital, not the university?

In short, there seems to be some type of relationship between the hospital and the university.

That is what I didn't understand either. So Yale has a real hospital, I can see that. But since they admitted an Yale student does it mean all their medical history is now shared. Or does it mean the psych ward head can advise with the "send home" vs "let them stay" binary decision up the chain, to the Dean for example, and the dean just accepts that and goes with it.

That is what I mean lie and don't trust institutions. Always think what and how they can use what you give them against you. Because sometimes they will.

Yep, wanted to make sure it's not just me missing something here. Left the OP a message in the comments that she might want to look into this, maybe she'll see it.

Probably it is the Anglo-American tradition of placing universities in smaller towns. The students of Columbia or NYU vanish in the metropolis. But towns like State College (Penn State), Boulder (the University of Colorado), etc. are dominated by the universities, which are cities to themselves.

The reason that universities have come to be prosecutors of sexual crimes is that they aren't burdened with the same burden of proof of the state and certain interest groups want it that way.

Many non-violent, sexual crimes do not yield physical evidence that anything beyond a consensual sexual encounter occurred so it becomes a he-said-she-said (or he-he, she-she, etc) issue in which the criminal justice system cannot, in theory, hold the accused criminally liable. Universities can basically do whatever they want and the US Dept. of Education even suggested that universities apply a "preponderance of evidence" standard for internally prosecuting sexual crimes. This means that the university can suspend/expel/discipline one for just 51% or greater likelihood that you are guilty. Even something as banal as the victim having 3 friends testify and the accused only having two would technically satisfy this all else being equal.

Now, in fairness, crimes do occur without physical evidence and women's groups aren't wrong to demand some form of justice for those crimes. However, these groups tend to be far more influential than anyone defending the accused ("hey, alleged non-violent rapists are people too!" just isn't a catchy soundbite) and have twisted this process into something resembling witch hunts more than modern justice.

just my $0.02

I'm Non-US and I'm not a university student, but Universities look after thousands of students at once, so it makes sense that they try to care about the well-being of their students. A lot, even if they don't have entire hospitals, will have some medical facilities on campus and will have some support infrastructure.

And if sexual harassment occurs on-campus, or involving staff or students, surely that is a University matter?

> And if sexual harassment occurs on-campus, or involving staff or students, surely that is a University matter?

------------------

No, I think that's a police matter. The contrary view strikes me as saying that if a member of my company sexually assaults another that's a company matter rather than a police matter.

The flaw being that the company is going to look out for itself, just as the university will. The third party, ideally, shouldn't have that conflict of interest.

> > if sexual harassment occurs on-campus, or involving staff or students, surely that is a University matter?

> No, I think that's a police matter.

I think it depends on who the victim reports it to, and which channel they want to impose consequences.

I've heard that going through the legal process can be stressful enough for some victims of sexual violence / harassment that they refuse to go through with it. From the standpoint of police / prosecutors, investigating / prosecuting crimes where the victim isn't cooperative or isn't willing to testify at trial, and there is little other evidence, isn't an effective use of limited government resources.

Whereas the university discipline process to suspend or expel a student for misconduct is essentially a private administrative proceeding which may be a more attractive forum for victims to pursue: There's a lower standard of proof, so the process is more likely to be successful; and the accused does not necessarily have a right to face the accuser in such a setting (it's clear that Constitutional rule in criminal proceedings is supposed to make it harder for a person to ruin someone else's life with a false criminal accusation, but it also creates a big psychological problem for some victims to overcome.)

My understanding is that university and police investigations are independent processes with different standards of proof.

Jurisdiction is not mutually exclusive.

Frequently it is. Interfering with a police investigation is illegal, taking action against someone who the courts have found innocent can be grounds for a lawsuit.

Frankly it strikes me that things would be significantly better if jurisdiction was always exclusive.

Interesting point. I've recently read about a case in my university where the student, who was disaffected with the university's response to a sexual harassment complaint, filed a complaint with the police, then was told the police can't do anything while the university hasn't issued a final ruling.

That is opposite to what the law here says, but if the law simply said that criminal offenses are police matters, period, the police's response would likely have been very different.

Well, in the case of certain elite universities, one might argue that they bear responsibility for the mental distress they inflict on their students.

For example, here at the Technion...

I read your comment as a joke, but it hints at a serious matter. I'm a TA at TAU EE, and my students really don't have enough time to sleep. Every deadline is a mix of mails begging for an extra day, and submissions at 5 AM. Talking with my students, it appears this is a faculty-wide problem - the coursework is simply too much (and this isn't simply students whining - in 4 years in CS/math I didn't hear of a single person cramming through the night for a deadline, something here is very different). I hear Technion is the same, for CS too.

Now, you take young people, pressurize them to excel or it will have lasting effects on their career, and deprive them of sleep. No wonder people have mental difficulties - it's actually a wonder this doesn't appear to happen here. Maybe it's a bit more maturity coming from the army service.

>I read your comment as a joke, but it hints at a serious matter.

I meant that comment as "ha ha, only serious".

>I'm a TA at TAU EE, and my students really don't have enough time to sleep. Every deadline is a mix of mails begging for an extra day, and submissions at 5 AM. Talking with my students, it appears this is a faculty-wide problem - the coursework is simply too much (and this isn't simply students whining - in 4 years in CS/math I didn't hear of a single person cramming through the night for a deadline, something here is very different). I hear Technion is the same, for CS too.

Technion is very definitely the same, in both CS and EE. I have never seen such overconsumption of coffee and energy drinks in my life as I have seen here. Worst part is that the professors consider this a normal, positive component of university-level education: they seem to believe that sleep and sanity are for the weak.

When I did my undergrad at UMass Amherst, "all-nighters" (or "white nights" as we say here in Israel) were extremely rare. Only the most difficult courses and the heaviest courseloads actually imposed them on you. Here at Technion, they're a regular affair for anyone taking courses, and occasionally for grad-students and professors too.

>Now, you take young people, pressurize them to excel or it will have lasting effects on their career, and deprive them of sleep. No wonder people have mental difficulties

Bingo.

>it's actually a wonder this doesn't appear to happen here. Maybe it's a bit more maturity coming from the army service.

As far as I can tell, it's not exactly maturity from the army. I would just call it inhumanity from the army. Technion's culture was formed from former soldiers who, given a workload to do, simply sat for six hours and did it, without pausing to stand, walk around, go the bathroom, check the internet, eat, drink, any of it. You can call this "discipline", but to do so makes it sound like a good thing.

My other guess is simply that it does happen here. I was chatting with a couple of other grad-level students in Technion's on-campus pub here last night, and telling them how when I was young I was forbidden to apply to MIT by my parents because of the suicide rate. They told me that Technion is also known for its suicide rate.

If Technion, at least, has a suicide problem, then we can't claim the mental problems deriving from high-pressure overwork are not happening here.

Thank you for the thoughtful response. To be honest, up till now I haven't heard of a suicide problem at MIT, Technion or TAU, but I wasn't exactly at the right circles anyway.

I wonder why doesn't the student body (here or at your place) rebel against this. At times I really want to grab one of the student representatives and suggest they do, but I know this will be the quick death of my academic career (not that chances are good as it is :-)

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