Reimagining Campus Safety by Uplifting Counselor Faculty

“You see one student, and then you can’t see them again until four weeks later because your caseload is enormous,” said Dr. Ian Wallace, CFA Maritime member and counselor faculty, describing the poor student-to-counselor ratios on many CSU campuses. “That’s not treatment. That’s not a counseling center. That’s a crisis center.”

In an earlier piece, we mentioned why the presence of militarized police on our campuses runs counter to what faculty and students believe can truly cultivate a safe and trusting environment. For Wallace—who previously served as the Director of Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) at Cal Maritime before it merged with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo—the stockpiling of militarized equipment and all the money that CSU management has put into campus policing is unwarranted.

Prioritizing Counselors When It Comes to Student Mental Health

What is warranted and a move in the right direction, Wallace argues, are de-escalation techniques and co-trainings with counselors and other health professionals. These are professionals who can help campus police develop the communication and interpersonal skills needed for true prevention. But as of right now, these trainings are more of an afterthought with little funding or priority.

Dr. Shelly Collins, CFA Long Beach co-president and counselor faculty, has been working alongside Wallace and other faculty in CFA’s Counselors Committee to determine better strategies for shifting from criminalizing students to one centered on student care, especially for students who may require hospitalization. In the past two years, the Counselors Committee has presented on this topic at two national conferences as well as at the CFA Equity Conference.

“We’ve been working with the Chancellor’s Office on training campus police officers, especially on response and the use of force, and how we can better work with students who have mental health issues or are neurodivergent,” Collins said.

Wallace explains that, across the country, people with mental health disabilities are at a higher risk of being hurt, harmed, or killed by police, rather than receiving the services or support that they need. Because of this, there has been a growing nationwide demand for models that pair mental health professionals together with first responders to provide a more humane and effective response. He argues that, on most campuses, a response led by counselors or mental health professionals—either alone or before police are called in—could significantly reduce the risk of harm to the student while de-escalating the situation.

But calling campus police is not without significant concern. Wallace asserts that, when we examine the history of police escalation, their use of force, and the fatalities that come with their responses, their training has not made a noticeable difference. This is especially true when it comes to underrepresented communities and Black and Brown men.

“No matter the training, there are always structural or systemic barriers that interfere with police being capable of accomplishing the goal of de-escalation or providing care that does not lead to hospitalization or escalation,” Wallace said. He also points to the lack of existing relationships that police have with the student population and communities. This, he says, is a big barrier to meeting the needs of the students in crises effectively, but it’s also a barrier to students in crisis calling for help as well as to others witnessing what’s happening.

“When it comes to students’ mental health and psychological safety, I don’t see why university police need to be a part of that–especially police armed with military-grade weapons,” said Collins. “This is not my vision of what campus safety looks like in any case.”

Non-Verbal Police Threats

Another problem is that police in uniform bearing weapons can be triggering and escalating for many students, especially those already in distress. Regardless of an individual’s experience with police, Wallace suggests that these reactions reflect the collective experiences that are based on a history of violence against minoritized individuals according to race, gender, class, and other social factors.

After George Floyd’s murder, it forced change on the Long Beach campus. The co-presidents of the Black Faculty and Staff Association held meetings with a lot of the leaders on campus to discuss what needed to change regarding policing on campus.

Collins noted that, because of these discussions, some of their campus police now wear khakis and polo shirts instead of their traditional uniform to look a lot less threatening. She also pointed out that some other campuses’ university police now refrain from handcuffing students when the matter involves a mental health issue, as that can be a very traumatic experience for the students.

Wallace also added that there are examples where, especially for a mental health crisis, a police officer will approach out of uniform and accompany someone in distress. In other cases, a designated liaison from the counseling center may respond instead, helping to reduce that barrier.

“But it ultimately centers around the prevention of mental health crises,” Wallace says. “There are many academic and professional consequences to mental health crises, especially with Maritime students who are on a licensed track with the US Coast Guard or seeking a military career. In these cases, hospitalization for mental health reasons can become a significant barrier to academic and professional success.”

Counselor-Led Evaluations Save Lives

In some non-violent scenarios, police confronted students and determined that they were experiencing severe mental health crises and needed to be transported to a hospital for emergency psychiatric treatment. As Wallace explains, these police evaluations are often inaccurate and, more importantly, potentially harmful. They are often life or death matters, as student hospitalization greatly increases their risk of attempting suicide in the weeks following psychiatric hospitalization.

However, in cases where police have worked in tandem with the counseling center, the approach has been much more proactive and centered around care, often avoids confrontation by responding with sensitivity, and reduces the rate of psychiatric hospitalization.

“If you have a counseling center that’s well-staffed and embedded in the campus community, you’re going to have existing relationships and the trust will be there,” said Wallace. “We [mental health professionals] should be the ones performing the evaluations, because that’s in our wheelhouse.”

Not only will counselors be able to do a better job, but they are better equipped at developing a safety plan that can prevent both hospitalization and its effects on the student.

Providing Counseling After Hours

While most counseling centers are typically open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday, most crises don’t happen during those hours. Instead, they happen in the evenings and on weekends when police are most available and ready to respond.

By expanding counseling hours to include after hours or overnight response, Wallace hopes campuses can be able to serve a greater proportion of the student community. In fact, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Director of Counseling & Psychological Services, Andrea Lawson, is currently leading the development of a new pilot program where counselors, rather than police or third-party contractors, are on call in the residence halls overnight every day of the week to respond to mental health crises.

Centering Counselors and Building Community

All this ties back to having more robust counseling centers that can serve a greater proportion of the community. While Wallace is fortunate to have a strong counselor-to-student ratio on his campus and has seen upwards of 30% of students every year, many of his colleagues on other campuses are far less fortunate.

Most campuses have failed to meet the counselor-to-student ratio of 1:1000-1500 that is recommended, which means that students cannot be supported when they need it the most.

“This doesn’t just pose a problem for the students, but it takes a significant toll on the counselors, whose caseloads are so large and unsustainable,” Wallace says. “They are left with severe burnout that affects the quality of their work and the care they give. This then leads to turnover, which shoulders the burden onto the director and fellow counselors who have to carry even more of the workload.”

At CSU Long Beach, the Campus Assessment & Stabilization Team (CAST) is a two-person mobile team of mental health professionals that works with law enforcement to respond to mental health crises. Collins explains that when police receive a call, they believe CAST is better suited to handle, they refer it to the team. The challenge, she notes, is securing enough funding to sustain CAST and to staff it with enough responders to meet urgent requests.

“We want to reimagine what campus police can look like,” Collins said. “We need a different framework, and that may require us starting from scratch and building it all back up. For now, there is always a perception of threat, which seems to be tied to one’s skin color, whether you’re Black or Brown, as well as your socio-economic status. But, there are ways in which we can approach these situations without criminalizing students, and I believe it can happen on our campus.”