Students should work together to expand access to mental health services and reduce wellness burdens like stress and anxiety.

Queen’s University recently published a comprehensive report on mental health best practices for its community, and some of the information contained within is disturbing. At Queen’s, 16 per cent of students reported a lifetime diagnosis of depression, 14 per cent reported a diagnosis of anxiety, and 5 per cent reported a diagnosis of an eating disorder. 4 per cent had considered suicide in the previous semester, and a further 10 per cent had at some point before that.

Stress was another large feature in students’ lives, with only 30 per cent of students reporting average stress levels, 40 per cent reporting above average levels and 20 per cent reporting tremendous levels of stress. The reported consequences of this stress include mental health problems, decreased academic performance, ill health, and missed school or work.

Only two in three students reported that they were involved in meaningful and enjoyable activities, and a quarter of students did not think they fit in at Queen’s.

Too much stress and anxiety? Mental health burdens too high? Too many people feeling isolated? That certainly sounds like McGill.

There is clearly something wrong here, but there is also an opportunity to reevaluate how our community works. We should prioritize health and wholeness to turn McGill into a supportive place for all students, faculty and staff.

The Queen’s report recommends a pyramidal approach – like the old American food pyramid – to promote mental health on campus. Promoting a healthy community is at the bottom, the large foundation where lean protein and whole grains used to be. Above lies transitions and resilience, and then encouraging help-seeking. Effective services occupy the smallest section of the pyramid. Here at McGill, we need to work on all of those areas.

Tuition and fees are capped by law, but universities can charge more if students approve the additional fees via referendum. That is how Student Services (which includes Mental Health Services) is funded. McGill then skims a small percentage off the top of the money to pay for lawyers’ fees and building maintenance. The university is threatening to increase the amount they take, even while they ask us to approve additional fee increases. McGill students already pay among the most in the province.

In the context of a campus with poor mental health, Mental Health Services undeniably needs more funding, so the fee increases should go to our services, not to the James building.

Here are three concrete solutions. First, we should offer more direct funding to Mental Health Services at McGill, but let’s be smart about it. We should pass a referendum offering additional money for Student Services if, and only if, McGill promises not to raise their overhead percentage fee for the services, as they are threatening to do. This would allow the service to see more students, for more sessions, for longer, and would make sure that 98.5 per cent of our additional funding goes straight to helping students. That’s a big deal.

In addition to funding direct treatment, SSMU should also create a $0.13 Mental Health Fund to support campus initiatives that promote mental health. It would raise about $6,000 annually, which could support student research or conferences, puppy petting in the library at exam times, specialized help for disadvantaged groups, programs to integrate students into campus life, or campaigns to end mental health stigma.

Finally, SSMU should design a comprehensive Mental Health Plan, with benchmarks and goals, concrete responsibilities, and a progressive vision of wellness on campus. Building on the pyramidal approach of Queen’s, we can build this plan by incorporating the expert knowledge found at our school and the lived experiences of our members.

Mental health and wellness should be a top priority, because school is hard enough without everything else on top of it. We can do better, and we should take this opportunity to centre our communities around wellness. Let’s look out for each other.

Chris Bangs is a U3 Economics and Political Science student. He can be reached at bangs.christopher@gmail.com.

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McGill – a school that prides itself on going green, with its Office of Sustainability, hundreds of environmental groups and classes, and tremendous student initiatives like Campus Crops and Gorilla Composting – invests in the fossil fuel companies and tar sands companies emitting greenhouse gases and driving climate change.

McGill has one of the largest endowment funds in Canada, about $1 billion in total, with an equally large pension fund. The endowment fund maintains significant investments in the largest fossil fuel companies on the planet, including 14 companies that extract oil from Alberta’s tar sands. The Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI) published a list of the 100 companies with the largest carbon reserves in coal, as well as another with the 100 companies with the largest carbon reserves in oil and gas. Thirty-five of them appear on McGill’s investment sheet. (The full list of the companies is on the divestmcgill.com website.)

In total, those companies have 205.455 gigatonnes of CO2 stored beneath the ground, which is 7 per cent of the world’s carbon reserves and 36 per cent of our remaining carbon budget for the next 38 years. The CTI estimates that only 886 gigatonnes can be emitted from 2000 to 2050 if we hope to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius. With 321 gigatonnes burned in the last 12 years, only 565 gigatonnes remain. Thus, 80 per cent of the world’s 2,795 gigatonne fossil fuel reserves must remain underground. None of these fossil fuel companies has pledged to keep 80 per cent of their resources unburned, nor will they as long as it is profitable for them.

At Divest McGill, we have a solution. We want our University to act in line with its supposed values, and sustainability and social responsibility are key values that students, faculty, staff, alumni, and many in the administration share. That is why we are asking the McGill Board of Governors to divest (disinvest) its holdings in the tar sands and fossil fuels. We are also asking them to divest from the Plan Nord and from companies acting without consent on indigenous land.

Students at 210 universities across North America are asking for the same thing. Our schools collectively provide extraordinary amounts of funding to these companies by owning shares directly, through pooled funds, and by investing in financial institutions that fund these destructive practices. Just like with apartheid South Africa, we are creating a divestment movement here with the potential to create positive change the world over.

Here is our game plan: we are currently collecting signatures for petitions, which you can sign online. On February 1, we will submit our petitions, signatures, and the final version of the social injury briefs (more on that in a second) to the Board of Governors, where the Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR) will consider our concerns and make recommendations. It will be a long process, but we intend to finish it however long it takes.

The CAMSR requires a social injury brief detailing the ways in which the companies harm people, the planet, and society before it will consider divestment. Divest McGill just published the first drafts of its two briefs and is looking for feedback. We will take all recommendations or concerns into account, and submit a revised version to the Board.

We will have a meeting on January 27 at 12 p.m. in the Clubs Lounge in SSMU to kick off a real campaign. Anyone interested in getting involved is welcome to come. In the meantime, if you are interested in helping out you can sign the petitions, send them to friends, share them on Facebook, and read the briefs. If you are part of a green club or union on campus, bring this campaign up and ask your organization to endorse this petition.

Together we can make McGill’s investments responsible and sustainable. Let’s work to hold McGill to a higher standard.

Chris Bangs is a U3 Economics and Political Science student. He can be reached at bangs.christopher@gmail.com. More information can be found at divestmcgill.com, including the petitions and briefs. 

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