Mental Health Services Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Available and Accessible?
Jennifer Maupin Oklahoma State released a comprehensive list of mental health resources last week, but that effort is not enough for the students and teachers who are demanding more from the university. In the freezing Monday morning rain, a small group of students shouting, “no more than four,” stood on Library Lawn in an attempt to call attention to students struggling with mental health. Daylen Burns, an OSU freshman, said he feels disassociated from the administrative side of the university and fighting for support “feels like it’s just a war between us.” “I want to see them care about their students and right now I’m not seeing that,” Burns said. Misinformation caused tensions to rise among students, with some unclear on the number of OSU students who have taken their own lives and the length of counseling wait times. Sophomore Celes Cost cites long wait times for counseling, even before the pandemic, as a main issue with the university’s handling of mental health. “I waited three months
Claire Boomer Daylen Burns speaks to a reporter about how his mental health is affected during the pandemic as a small group of students protest on Library Lawn on October 26, 2020 in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
for therapy that I needed for issues I was dealing with that would have helped me get through my first semester,” Cost said. “Instead, I ended up on academic probation and in the pit because of my anxiety issues that I had no idea how to deal with.” However, last week, The O’Colly reported that University Counseling Services has “a current wait time of one to two weeks.”
Discrepancies between students and administrators on the level of available mental health services led to the creation of “An Open Letter to Oklahoma State University Admin (COVID-19 Petition).” The letter is officially authored by adjunct professor Pierce Marks, but includes the input of several anonymous students. While students can use virtual walk-in appointments throughout the week, Marks said students need to be able to continually meet
with the same therapist, which they can’t do when the ratio of counselors to students is one to 1,669. This ratio is based on free or low-cost services. The university has around 20 to 26 counselors that charge ‘based on a sliding scale,’ meaning the charge increases with the number of sessions.
‘The senior citizens club’ Football analysts a key to Gundy’s success Chris Becker Experience is something every coach needs to have in their tool box, but there will always be someone with more experience out there. For coach Mike Gundy, he has three analysts on his staff that each have over 40 years of experience at all levels of competition. Bill Clay, Chris Thurmond and Gary Gibbs each have been around football for a lot longer than Gundy, and they now each help him
succeed in all aspects of his life. “Those guys are a big part of our team,” Gundy said. “The senior citizens club as I call them. They get and have great information for me. When you have guys like Clay, Gibbs and Thurman who are still involved in coaching they’ve got 40-plus years, they’ve been coordinators, they’ve been in big programs, they’ve been in programs where you have to fight every week to survive and some of them have NFL experience. They’ve been around young people all of their life. They have valuable information for me as a coach.”
Joshua Cleary
See Mental Health on page 2
Keeping coaches of their stature in one place is a difficult task, but Gundy said where they are, they have no ego and just want to see the team succeed. “Once you get to the point where they’re at they don’t have any egos,” Gundy said. “So, they’re just here to make Oklahoma State football better, and I lean heavily on those guys for information on the field, the attitude of our team and my approach as a head coach when I communicate with them week to week. “Those guys are a tremendous resource for me in a lot of different ways much less football.” Clay, Thurman
and Gibbs are all listed as defensive analysts, but they do much more than just help on the defensive side of the ball. When someone has been around football for as long as they have, they know the game inside and out. “For both sides of the ball they’re excellent, you can’t really have enough guys like that,” Gundy said. “The difference is they’re at a point in their career where they don’t care anymore. They just want to be a part of the team, they like coaching football and being involved. They are very very important to our organization.” sports.ed@ocolly.com