Fresh Check Day Needs to be Checked

Jules Bourbeau ’25

Managing Editor

I will readily admit that I am biased regarding this opinion, since I did not attend last year’s Fresh Check Day. The reason for this? Well, I was in a psychiatric hospital. You’ll have to forgive me, therefore, for not being the most knowledgeable regarding the actual mechanics of the day itself. However, I feel that the irony of my Fresh Check Day having been spent in a mental institution qualifies me to speak on the matter of mental health at Trinity.

Even having not yet attended Fresh Check Day myself, I can guarantee that it is not enough. Fresh Check Day is a nationwide program that aims to promote suicide prevention on college campuses. Last year, several booths were set up on Gates Quad with a mix of mental health resources and miscellaneous just-for-fun stations. Cute animals and prize giveaways are lovely, but they are not real, material solutions. Allow me to talk through some of my experiences at the hospital to give you an understanding of what happens if you are severely mentally ill at Trinity College.

I called Campus Safety one night last year asking to be taken to the hospital. They seemed slightly reluctant to do so, but relented when I was insistent. I remember being baffled that the officer who drove me there said nothing except to ask me if I had caught the basketball game that night. When he dropped me off, he said, “Call us when you need a ride back.” I said nothing, but thought to myself, “They don’t know how this is going to go. I’m not going to be back for a long time.” And I was right.

The night that I was admitted also happened to be the night preceding course registration. To the college’s credit, they handled this well. Through various by-proxy contacts, I managed to have the registrar put me in the courses I wanted. I had assumed that since Campus Safety drove me to the hospital, they would know why I was missing from my classes, and would inform the school. This was not the case. When I finally convinced the nurses to allow me access to my phone one week into my stay, I had several emails from concerned professors wondering where I was. What’s more, a Campus Safety officer had emailed me asking why I had not been in class, as if they had not been the ones to bring me to the hospital in the first place!

I will not even bother to go into the nightmare that was doing housing selection from the hospital, but needless to say, it was not made easy for me. I say all of this to illuminate that in regards to mental health, particularly suicidality, Trinity still has a long way to go. Fresh Check Day is a nice gesture, but is just that: a gesture. What we truly need is a concrete system in place for what happens when a student goes to a psychiatric hospital. In the worst moments of my adult life, the onus should not have been on me to figure everything out. In reality, it was my professors and friends that helped me the most, when what I most needed was for the administration to step up. I hope that my unfortunate experiences can serve as a lesson to the school that “checking in” is not enough.