2 — Friday, January 17, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News

TUESDAY:
By Design
THURSDAY:
Twitter Talk

FRIDAY:
Behind the Story

WEDNESDAY:
This Week in History

MONDAY:

Looking at the Numbers

B E HIND THE STORY

Every Friday, Daily staffers will give a behind the scenes look at 
one of this week’s stories. This week, LSA freshman Jasmin Lee 
and sophomore Calder Lewis on their three-part series about 
University mental health services:

“Over break, we interviewed multiple students from all over the 
country who we asked from social media who would be interested in 
talking about our material. We got their opinions about the mental 
health resources at their schools and colleges. We also got U-M 
students talking about CAPS and other resources that they’ve used 
here.”

Jasmin Lee

“The biggest roadblock that we had was figuring out the angle of the 
first story. We started out with a huge, basically 6,000-word piece, 
and we ended up splitting it into three separate stories.”

Calder Lewis

Annie Klusendorf/Daily

QUOTE OF THE WE E K 

“
For generations, the Michigan Union has been a place 
where students lead, a place of activism and a place of 
student-driven change that has made us a better and more 
important University. It’s my hope that the Union encourages 
students from all different backgrounds and academic 
disciplines to interact and take advantage of the outstanding 
breadth and diversity of our great University.”

University President Mark Schlissel at the Union opening Monday afternoon

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Faculty panel to set academic 
agenda for presidential debate

2020 theme semester ‘Debate and Democracy’ aims to encourage student civic engagement

JULIA FORREST 
Daily Staff Reporter

The Presidential Debate 
Academic 
Advisory 
Committee, a new faculty 
committee, will create a 
“Democracy 
and 
Debate” 
themed academic semester 
for Fall 2020 ahead of the 
2020 presidential debate. 
The 
committee 
plans 
to 
incorporate 
various 
debate-centered 
academic 
events in all 19 schools and 
colleges 
throughout 
the 
University in order to make 
students 
 
more 
civically 
engaged. Additionally, the 
committee is encouraging 
each 
school 
and 
college 
within the University to host 
discussions, lecture series 
and other programs centered 
around 
the 
debate 
and 
civically engaging topics. 
Angela 
Dillard, 
the 
committee 
chair 
and 
a 
professor of Afroamerican 
and African studies, spoke 
to The Daily about the goals 
and plans of the committee 

and the 2020 semester.
“Ideally, 
the 
theme 
semester 
offerings 
will 
highlight 
the 
U-M 
disciplinary 
and 
interdisciplinary strengths,” 
Dillard said. “The theme 
semester also provides a 
forum for exploration and 
discussion of a range of 
issues at play during the 
2020 election season, from 
health care and economic 
mobility to climate change, 
immigration, education and 
mass incarceration.” 
Dillard 
expressed 
how 
important 
it 
will 
be 
for 
students 
from 
interdisciplinary 
backgrounds to participate 
in the activities.
“In this moment in U.S. 
politics, the most pressing 
issues 
that 
confront 
us 
as a nation are radically 
interdisciplinary,” 
Dillard 
said. 
“Hence, 
solutions 
will need to span academic 
disciplines, 
will 
need 
to 
be responsive to citizens 
and 
other 
members 
of 
communities, will need to 

be grounded in evidence and 
open to inquiry, debate and 
the free exchange of ideas 
in ways that incorporate a 
diversity of opinions and 
lived realities.” 
Another member of the 
committee, Jenna Bednar, 
professor of political science, 
spoke on the committee’s 
efforts to get student input 
on the academic agenda. 
“We’re working with our 
student 
groups 
to 
make 
sure that we are able to 
incorporate as many student 
perspectives 
as 
possible 
into our decision making,” 
Bednar 
said. 
“They’re 
literally at the core of our 
decision-making process.” 
One of the groups the 
committee is working with 
is 
the 
Central 
Student 
Government. Public Policy 
senior and CSG President, 
Ben 
Gerstein, 
is 
one 
of 
the student leaders on the 
core 
committee, 
a 
unit 
of 
the 
PDAAC 
working 
with various departments 
involved with the debate. He 
said students have reacted 

positively to the idea of a 
themed semester. 
“I think it presents a 
unique 
opportunity 
for 
curricula from faculty who 
are putting together this 
with intention and the idea 
of making this an experience 
that not only do our students 
get 
to 
maximize 
their 
ability to experience what’s 
occurring when the debate is 
actually on campus, but have 
some sort of contextualized 
understanding,” 
Gerstein 
said.
Bednar said the committee 
will continue to design and 
prepare the themed semester 
with 
student 
voices 
and 
campus resources in mind. 
“It’s the first time the 
University’s 
hosted 
one 
of these debates, and so I 
hope that students feel a lot 
of pride in hosting and in 
having the world tuned into 
the University of Michigan, 
Ann Arbor,” Bednar said. “I 
hope that it gives (students) 
an opportunity to reflect on 
their own role as a citizen in 
our democracy.”

Assistant News Editors: Francesca Duong, Julia Forrest, Brayden Hirsh, Jasmin 
Lee, Hannah Mackay, Parnia Mazhar, Alyssa McMurtry, Emma Ruberg, Julia 
Rubin, Michal Ruprecht, Arjun Thakkar

Senior Social Media Editors: Jessie Norris, Mya Steir, Kristina Zheng 

“As part of our counseling 
services, we offer a same-day 
access for any student for any issue 
every day,” Patishnock said. “On 
any given day, 50 students walk 
in without an appointment and 
they either get a brief consultation 
or routine screening or crisis 
appointment. Then there’s the 
continuity of care expectations 
meaning that the commissions 
here that screen that student will 
keep them here if we can. That’s 
a significant part of our resources 
for students.”
According 
to 
MSU 
CAPS’ 
website, 
initial 
visits 
take 

anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes, 
including paperwork and waiting 
room 
time. 
MSU 
freshman 
Lily 
Callis 
said 
the 
walk-in 
appointments made it easy for her 
to find access to care right away at 
MSU CAPS.
“The walk-in is very helpful 
when someone is having a crisis 
and I think that’s very helpful 
to have on campus,” Callis said. 
“They typically refer a lot of 
students to outside campus help 
since there’s so many students.”
MSU CAPS offers referrals 
to resources outside of its own 
services, 
including 
hospitals, 
therapists and other mental health 
professionals in the East Lansing 
area MSU has staff members 
assign 
students 
with 
these 

resources and ensure they are 
safe. Patishnock said he sees this 
as a solution to the drastic increase 
of students seeking mental health 
services at MSU CAPS in recent 
years. 
“Given the total increase in the 
number of counselors we had, 
we’ve had to refer out a significant 
number of students to the local 
community,” 
Patishnock 
said. 
“We’ve hired a full-time referral 
coordinator and social worker 
who meets with students all day 
long and helps them get connected 
into the community as opposed to 
just giving them information to 
make sure they don’t get lost.”
At the University of Michigan, 
CAPS prefers to keep students 
within their counseling center for 

mental health issues that can be 
solved for short-term counseling. 
The CAPS annual report showed 
more than 73 percent of clients 
attended five or fewer sessions in 
the 2018-19 school year.
Since 
U-M 
CAPS 
is 
not 
designed for long-term mental 
health support, less than 1 percent 
of students receive more than 20 
appointments.
According to Sevig, CAPS has 
one care manager who places 
students with resources outside of 
the organization which they can 
access for long-term use.
“One thing we started — 
and we were the first in the 

CAPS 
From Page 1

See CAPS, Page 3

