OPINION: New Student Senate Bill argues that the Honors Tutorial College should not receive exclusive mental health resources

Photo via Jayson Smith/Ohio University Student Senate

Ava Jelepis, a Freshman studying Journalism, argues that the mental health resources exclusively provided to HTC students should be shared among the rest of the student body.

Nearly half of the 60 million people living with mental health conditions do not receive the treatment they need. Mental health is such an important issue across the nation, and now more than ever here on Ohio University’s campus since the tragic loss of two students due to mental health struggles. Yet, there is still a great amount of stigma surrounding it. This stigma becomes harder to shake when the university inadvertently feeds into it by giving specific students exclusive mental health resources. 

The Honors Tutorial College provides its students with exclusive mental health resources not offered to all other students on campus. These services include free counseling sessions from the Psychology and Social Work Clinic (PSWC), which HTC pays for. Though the PSWC is open to all students, unless you are in the HTC, students must pay for their services themselves or with insurance. Ohio U’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS) is available to all students for free; however, it's backed up and hard to find appointments. 

On Ohio U’s official website, you can find a page that briefly mentions these exclusive resources. The site says, “As you probably realize, honors students tend to quickly become overachievers at everything—including stressing themselves out. The college has put in place special resources above and beyond what is available to every OHIO Bobcat.”

The website’s wording has more problems than admitting to giving a specific group of students extra mental health resources. It also suggests that honors students get more stressed because they are “overachievers,” which could be interpreted as “they work harder.” 

There are so many students on campus who are not in the HTC, who work just as hard or even harder. A student's work ethic should not be assumed by what college or program they are in or what honors title they may have. Also, stress and working hard are not concepts that only apply to school. There are a wide range of reasons a student could be stressed out that have nothing to do with their academics, and the two should not be put hand in hand.

Giving honors students exclusive mental health services also adds to the stigma that something has to be wrong to have a mental health issue. It’s inadvertently putting the idea in students' heads that you have to be an “overachieving” honors student to feel stressed out and “unlock” those extra services when, in reality, you don’t. 

You don’t need any reason to feel stressed out or have a mental health issue. Though mental health issues can be the result of something, they can also happen for no reason at all. The mindset of “I have no reason to be feeling this way” is one of the reasons people wait so long to get the help they need or don’t get it at all. 

The whole idea of honors students receiving exclusive mental health resources adds to multiple mental health stigmas, and the university should be doing better than this to support its students. Over winter break, Senators Jayson Smith and Mark Vitelli recognized these issues and planned to bring them to the attention of Student Senate when they returned to campus.

Smith and Vitelli are both freshmen at Ohio University. Smith is an HTC student, while Vitelli is an Honors program student. They both agreed that mental health is a big issue on campus right now and wondered what the Senate could do to help the student body. Together, they created a bill to change what isn't working regarding mental health on campus. They shared some of their concerns about the current system with me.

“It builds on the assumption that you have to have a good reason to need help, like, you have to be really stressed out by school to need help… you don’t have to be stressed out to need a lot of help, and I think that's important,” said Vitelli. 

“It does build on the idea where you have to be doing a lot to be suffering from something, and that, in a lot of cases, is not true,” Smith agreed.

One part of the bill recommends that the university evaluate its funding and pour more into Ohio U’s mental health resources. The hope is to help provide all students with the same amount of resources, regardless of what college they are part of.

“I just think it's the wrong approach to say we can't fund this healthcare for everyone, so we're going to choose who gets it,” says Vitelli regarding HTC’s extra mental health resources. “I recognize there was a problem with funding. I mean, it’s a public university, but they should go about it in a different way.” 

Regarding funding, the university’s total enrollment keeps increasing, meaning more students are on campus. The university is building its largest residence hall to date, which will cost $110.5 million and will be open for the fall 2026 semester. 

These new residence halls will likely not benefit any students on campus right now. However, what would benefit students on campus is more funding for CPS, as well as more opportunities funded by the university to extend similar resources that the HTC pays for to all students. Though the new dorms are important in their own light, the well-being of the study body should come before all.

“You don’t even have to look at buildings. You can look at the salaries of employees. I mean, our football coach gets paid right around half a million dollars a year. I think obviously, football is important to a D1 school, but so are the lives of students. Just looking at where the university is spending its money, it's concerning.” Vitelli adds. 

However, there are also issues that funding can't fix, such as capacity. For both the CPS and the PSWC, there are waitlists, since they can only serve so many people at one time, and there is a demand for their services. This is not the fault of the CPS or the PSWC and, again, is an issue that funding cannot fix. 

Though funding cannot fix the issue of capacity, funding can create more mental health-related events on campus, as well as campaigns to help students feel less alone, even if they are unfortunately on a waitlist. In a perfect world, there would be no waitlists for these services, but emphasizing the importance of mental health on campus allows students to feel seen and heard. This leads me to the second part of the bill. 

The bill says Student Senate should create a task force “with the mission of analyzing the university’s policies established and actions taken to combat the mental health crisis.” The task force will make observations and take recommendations from the study body to see what the university can be doing better to help fight the mental health crisis. They will also organize events and campaigns in relation to mental health, “with a particular focus on combating the stigma.” 

“I’m in a position of privilege here because of the resources, not everyone has them.” Smith recognizes as an HTC student. “There's not anything separating normal students from HTC students, other than a title, you know?...[For example] a lot of Student Senate, a lot of the executive staff, not in HTC... there are people that work just as hard who aren't in HTC.” 

Vitelli, who had also applied for a spot in the HTC, agreed and added, “It’s just interesting to think, we both applied for the same thing…because they chose him over me, he gets more [mental health] resources.”

Smith and Vitelli presented the bill to Student Senate on Wednesday, Jan. 29. They both gave thoughtful speeches about how mental health affects the lives of so many across the nation, yet there are a number of barriers that prevent people from accessing the help they need. 

They expressed that they believe Ohio U is currently also placing barriers on their students' ability to get the resources they need by limiting funding, as well as giving selected students more resources than some.

“The students of Ohio University put their trust in us to serve their best interest. Let us all come together to send a powerful message of support,” Vitelli said in his speech. Sure enough, there was an overwhelmingly positive response and support during the Senate meeting. The bill passed with all members on board, and they took a moment at the end to reflect on the importance of this bill and of mental health.

As Smith said in his speech, “While Student Senate cannot solve the United States’ mental health crisis, there is something we can do locally for the students we speak on behalf of, and it all starts right here by passing this bill.” This is Smith and Vitelli’s second bill passed together, a great accomplishment for them both.

I am hopeful this bill will bring positive changes for every student of every academic college throughout Ohio U’s campus. Though this bill will not put an end to mental health-related issues, it is a step in the right direction toward beating the stigma and letting more students know they are not alone.

Please note that these views and opinions do not reflect those of The New Political.