When the Center for Health and Wellness (CHW) recently announced the termination of the MiddSafe Hotline and Mental Health Peer Educators (MPHE) program, it cited a lack of student use as the reason. They pointed to the increase in mental health resources in the CHW as having supplemented the need for the hotline. They announced that their new program, Peers Educating for Affirming Relations (PEAR), will absorb the responsibilities of both MiddSafe and MPHE.
While we are relieved to see an increase in accessibility of professional counseling and other mental health resources on campus, we are concerned about the loss of MiddSafe. MiddSafe was unique in what it offered our community; a 24/7 hotline staffed by real students who were trained as certified rape crisis workers provided an invaluable service to Middlebury students.
The MiddSafe advocates provided a selfless service, and in return, students could receive counseling from a peer who understands what it means to be a student at Middlebury. No one knows what it means to feel isolated at Middlebury better than students themselves. Access to peer counseling is key to addressing issues of sexual assault, isolation and mental health crises. Closing MiddSafe leaves us without a place to turn anonymously and particularly deprived should we or our friends seek this kind of support, especially on weekend nights when these services are often the most dire. We don’t view TimelyCare and PubSafe as comparable resources — many of us know someone personally who benefited directly from MiddSafe.
While it seems unlikely, we hope that PEAR can fill some of the gap it will leave behind.
We also wonder if MiddSafe’s decline in calls could be a result of frequent staff turnover and a lack of effective communication about MiddSafe itself. First-year orientation is one of the only times students are required to learn about resources such as MiddSafe. With the many exciting and sometimes overwhelming feelings the first few days at college can bring, orientation is not the only time students should hear about resources directly.
Tactics the CHW could use to market their many resources include better promotion of events — not just the posting of flyers, but a greater social media presence from programs like PEAR, as well as student body-wide emails and events.
Engagement with resources like MiddSafe may have increased if administrators and professors made a broader effort to encourage student engagement with these resources. Students should not have to choose between club events, meetings or athletic commitments to engage with mental health resources that could be the difference for a student in a crisis down the line.
To increase student engagement with mental health and safety resources on campus, we as students must also reframe the culture of who attends these events and why. You do not need to be interested in counseling, a resident assistant or a member of a CHW peer group to attend events that often provide free food, stickers, and sometimes even therapy dogs during finals week — if you go, you might find out about a resource that could help you or a struggling friend in the future.
We hope the sudden and disappointing closure of MiddSafe can be an opportunity for everyone in our community to reflect on the value of a peer-to-peer relationship when addressing mental health concerns or crises. We call on CHW to reinstate a crisis hotline with Middlebury students on the other end of the line as a part of PEAR. We also hope to see positive student engagement with these new resources in the future. For any student at Middlebury to experience a sense of belonging and place in their community, they must first experience a sense of safety.
Middlebury often feels like a safe haven, but we want students to remember that it is not. Staying educated and engaging with our community over matters of safety is essential to ensure we keep each other safe on our campus.
