Change.org - Help these grieving students

Students at Santa Clara University are grieving after three students died in the past month – two of them suicide deaths. Molly is an SCU student who thinks the school needs to do more to help students who are scared and grieving. Add your name to join her call for crisis counseling and academic leniency for SCU students Petition for Academic Leniency & Contracted Crisis Counseling at SCU 13,089 have signed Molly Tucker’s petition. Let’s get to 15,000!

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In less than a month, the community of Santa Clara University has experienced three tragic deaths. Families, friends, entire classes, and fellow Broncos have mourned and, before grief can even begin to subside, another loss takes away the ability to fully process and grieve those we have lost. With the third death occurring last night, we are scared scared. We are speechless. Students are scattering home or away from the campus in an effort to avoid the effects of paranoia with the shared fear of “Who is it going to be next?” In the same month, we have been expected to attend all classes, complete all assignments, and ace all midterms and assessments. Santa Clara is not a large school - even a single death cannot be swept under the rug in a way where not every single student is affected by it. The expectation to “Keep on and Carry on” is dehumanizing to not only the lost souls, but to every single person affected by them: The expectation to walk on campus, passing the scene of a self inflicted death, is horrifying; the expectation to sit next to the empty chair in class left by a peer who is no longer with us is unsettling; and the expectation to strive for academic and social excellence when our community is CLEARLY crumbling is innately cruel and invalidating. We need help. The school has clearly run out of resources to help us and hardly any support has been given aside from candle light vigils and temporary crisis support gatherings after said vigils. We request that the school contract a third party crisis counseling and therapy company that can aid struggling students either via telemedicine or in-clinic visits. CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services) - our so-called all encompassing therapy program provided on campus - has been known to never have enough resources or availability to assist the increasingly struggling student body; it sure doesn’t have enough now. We are constantly given empty promises to reach out for help and we will receive it; when we do, we are told the next CAPS appointment is months away. These tragedies are deeply impacting us, without proper aid, the mental health crisis will continue to worsen. Ironically, SCU as an institution prides itself on its Jesuit values, yet Cura Personalis, or care of the person, seems to be a grossly neglected one. We also request that the school grant academic leniency to the highly fearful and greatly affected student body. Truly, students should be excused fully at this point - either freezing grades or excusing the student body to prioritize recovery, healthy grieving, and seeking help. We are entering the hardest part of the quarter - the home stretch of endless finals and projects constituting an upwards of 20% or more of our grades. The loss of THREE human lives in such an incredibly short time span is something that no one, especially college students living on their own away from their roots and concrete resources, should experience. The administration needs to find a way to support us by giving us academic breathing room so that we may find our bearings and respectfully mourn those we have lost rather than suppress and compartmentalize.  Something is deeply wrong. We are scared, hurt, and paralyzed with grief. The place we love feels sinister and evil, taking our friends and peers away in the most brutal fashion. We are not asking for a “freebie” as many professors or admin suspect - we are asking for mercy. We are asking to humanize the horrors we have experienced in the past month before deflecting the problem becomes a persistent causal agent in similar tragedies. With no time to process what has happened, we can only expect mental health and performance in school to depreciate. If you cannot find it in yourselves to help us as we request, at least selfishly look at the superficial level of the university as it stands. I’m sure SCU looks wonderfully prestigious and appealing to prospective students with the sheer amount of depressing headlines - including and not limited to the three deaths during October and November 2021 - and no demonstrative support for the student body.  If only one thing is taken away from this entire petition, let it be this: We are asking for mercy. We are asking for time and space to grieve without academic consequence. We are asking to humanize and validate the tragedies we have experienced. We are asking to be treated with the concern, empathy, and care that your Jesuit values so starkly embrace. Please consider this and the following signatures.

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