Community Building

The NYU community is in a period of reflection. In that spirit, we share with students, staff and faculty the important work that has been done over the past year to build our sense of community on campus, and the wellness of students, and to share with you some important resources that are available to all.

The creation of a caring environment is important to both the academic and social experience of all in our community and to our success as a university.

We have built our approach over this past year on a set of tenets:

• The NYU community has certain core values that we hold dear: honesty, trust, respect, integrity, and community.
• Recognizing who we are—a large, decentralized, urban campus—means we must understand the special challenges our nature presents, and we must focus our energies with those challenges in mind as we try to develop and enrich subsets of our community: for example, by residence, floor, class, club, or academic passions.
• We expect each member of the community to be thoughtful and responsible, to look after others, to be accountable for his or her own actions, and to role model appropriate and respectful behavior.

NYU's present focus on community building started with the process which produced the March 2002 Presidential Transition Report. Based on consultations with students, faculty, administrators and staff, the report highlighted the need for community building on campus. Since, we have taken these concerns seriously and produced several concrete initiatives designed to create a sense of community, to enhance student life, and to provide a safe and healthy living and learning environment.

Several welcoming events and new programmatic initiatives have been designed and implemented to make incoming students full participants in this new emphasis on community building. These include the All-University President’s Welcome, the new Graduate Student Reception, and the Freshman Beach Ball, among others.

Moreover, in January, the University will be launching the new student resource center, designed to meet the targeted needs of commuters, transfers, graduate students, parents, and students at large.

In light of the recent tragedies, it seems useful to outline our ongoing efforts in three particular areas: residence life, drug and alcohol policy, and counseling.

Residential Life

Peer-to-peer community building is a very important student resource. Our vision includes creating a living and learning environment that nurtures social, intellectual and personal growth and draws on the strengths of peers to help do so.

Freshmen are in a critical and impressionable period in their lives. As a result, to promote class and community identity, we have designated Weinstein, Goddard and Brittany as freshman residence halls. In other residence halls not exclusively for freshmen, freshmen are clustered together on their own floors. Next year, we will expand this concept, and freshmen will be clustered together in six all-freshman residence halls. In addition, we are continuing our pilot program in Weinstein Residence Hall, where the Resident Assistant (RA)-to-student ratio has been doubled in the belief that it will nurture leadership within the residences, provide guidance, and develop the peer support that is important to the freshman experience. The hours of the College Learning Center, located in Weinstein Hall, have been expanded, reflecting that program’s success.

This year, an even more ambitious plan for the 216 freshmen living in Goddard Hall has been initiated. There we created six living-learning communities. These intentional communities include a focus on the arts, music, poetry, leadership, and architecture and draw on the resources of our distinguished faculty. This concept has been strongly embraced by students, and next year this program will be replicated in each of the freshman residences and in some residences for upperclassmen.

Peers can play an especially important role in addressing the mental health, alcohol, drug, adjustment, and identity issues that so often make young people feel vulnerable at a critical time in their lives. This year RA training has been significantly improved. Together with key programs on campus—including the Office of African American, Latino, and Asian American Student Services; Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Student Services; International Student Services; the Office of Career Services; Office of Drug and Alcohol Education; and Sexual Assault Prevention, Education, and Support Services—this year we developed a pilot, expanded peer education program in two of our residence halls, placing trained peers in Rubin and Lafayette residence halls to work side-by-side with RA’s.

Also this year the University is starting the Advisement Institute, a new initiative that will offer workshops and symposia to RA's and academic advisors on selected topics in the areas of mental health, diversity, academic integrity, campus resources, and career services, among other areas. The program is designed to train these groups on an on-going basis and serve as a supplement to the training RA's and peer educators received before the semester began. The inaugural workshop is scheduled for Friday, October 17th.

Drugs And Alcohol

As part of the Middle States Reaccreditation process, the Provost’s Student Affairs Committee—composed of deans, faculty, staff, and students&mdsah;has been addressing the specific goal of building community. The report, currently being finalized, focuses directly on the issue of community and makes several additional recommendations for enhancing current efforts. Together with a Provostial Faculty Committee on Mental Health and Drug and Alcohol Use at NYU—made up of leading researchers in the field—the Student Affairs Committee identified as a high priority the issue of mental health and drugs and alcohol at NYU. The University addressed the problem early this semester by refining its policies on student use of alcohol and drugs. NYU sought to develop a guiding philosophy and related standards in the area of drugs and alcohol that made explicit our expectations for students, the consequences for their behavior, and their responsibility for their own actions. In keeping with a wellness model, the policy includes a medical amnesty provision, allowing students to seek treatment rather than having the incident pursued as a disciplinary case.

In addition, the new Student Affairs Alcohol, Drug, Mental Health Advisory Board—which will be made up of faculty, staff, and students—will implement a specific plan stemming from the work done during the Middle States review process.

The best way to address the overall mental health needs of students is through a caring community. The Counseling Service and the Office of Drug and Alcohol Education will remain critical resources for students, but nothing can replace our reliance on one another to achieve a safe and healthy living environment.

Counseling

Ten years ago, the university counseling services were primarily concerned with academic and social anxiety and the family separation process that young people face. Today, these counselors confront a more challenging set of problems: depression, bi-polar disorder, cutting, eating disorders, psychosis, and suicide. These problems are present at NYU, just as they are throughout the national university landscape.

New York University has a dedicated counseling service with nearly 30 full-time professionals, through which help is available for students around the clock. It is located at 726 Broadway, and it offers professional, confidential care. These mental health services are provided by co-directors Dr. Paul Grayson, a psychologist, and Dr. Victor Schwartz, a psychiatrist. These experts also draw on other strengths around the campus, including the School of Social Work and the School of Medicine in times of crisis. There is also a separate dedicated program for faculty and staff, called the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program.

There is no one or typical response to a crisis. In the immediate aftermath of a crisis, some students may seek services right away; others may find that they don’t need services immediately, but may later on find themselves in need of support; still other students may not experience any problematic feelings at all. The University feels it is important to know that the Counseling Service is there for students whenever they feel the need to receive its services.

Recent Events

We thought it might be helpful to end this memo by reminding you of steps the University has taken in response to the recent deaths. The ongoing efforts at community building already underway provided the framework for our response.

Counseling was provided in the residence halls, where critical contributions also were made by residential education staff, which this year had gone through our enhanced training program. Through our Counseling Services and the Residential Education staff, we will continue to follow up with those who may be most affected by these tragedies, including friends, floor mates, teammates, and witnesses to these tragedies, among others. The University has provided direct support to the families, and has and will send student and staff representatives to the hometown memorial services. The Faculty and Staff Assistance Program, through its own corps of dedicated counselors, has also been actively engaging the community, in particular offering their assistance to staff in Bobst Library.

The conversation about the safety of our students as part of our community building efforts will be a long and wide ranging one, and the University will enlist the counsel of experts on mental health, both from within and outside its faculty and administrative ranks, in guiding its decision-making. We welcome your suggestions.

Your safety and well-being is our highest priority. Remember that there are people all around you who stand ready to help you. Together, now more than ever, we hope that all of us in the NYU community of students, faculty, staff and administrators will dedicate ourselves to looking out for one another and taking care of each other.

Below is a list of resources that are there to assist you whenever you may need them.

University-Wide Resources

University Counseling Services (Main Office)
University Health Center
726 Broadway, Suite 471
212.998.4780
www.nyu.edu/counseling

University Counseling Services Satellite Offices
College of Arts and Science
Silver Center, Room 920
Monday-Friday, 2-3:00 pm

General Studies Program
Shimkin Hall, Room 326
Monday-Friday, 1-2:00 pm

Steinhardt School of Education
Pless Hall, 2nd Floor
By appointment

Tisch School of the Arts
721 Broadway, 12th Floor
By appointment

University Health Center
726 Broadway, Third and Fourth Floors
212.443.1000
www.nyu.edu/nyuhc

The Office of Drug and Alcohol Education
University Health Center
726 Broadway, Suite 352
212.443.1220
www.nyu.edu/odae

Center for Health Promotion
726 Broadway, Suite 344
212.443.1234
www.nyu.edu/nyuhc/chp

African American, Latino, and Asian American Student Services (OASIS)
60 Washington Square South, 8th Floor
212.998.4343

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Student Services
60 Washington Square South, 6th Floor
212.998.4424

Protestant Campus Ministries
238 Thompson Street, 1st Floor
212.998.4711

Residential Education
Hayden Hall, 1st Floor
212.998.4311

Office of Student Activities
60 Washington Square South, 7th Floor
212.998.4700

Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs
Marc Wais
60 Washington Square South, Suite 601
212.998.4410

NYU Department of Public Safety
221.998.2222
24 hours a day

Residence Hall Community Development Educators & Housing Offices

Alumni & 7th Street
212.995.3162
Lydia Kim: 212.998.1339

Brittany
212.995.3090
Kenya James: 212.995.3091

Broome
212.995.3935
TBA: 212.995.3936

Carlyle
212.443.7474
Charity Halsdorf: 212.443.7472

Cliff & John
212.842.0220
Laurel Christy: 212.271.6035

Coral Towers
212.443.3000
Catherine-Mary Vierling: 212.998.4068

2nd Street
212.992.1717
Kristi Lonardo: 212.992.1739

Goddard
212.995.3131
Kimberyly Yousey: 212.995.3128

Greenwhich Hotel
212.443.4701
Mirta Tejada: 212.443.4703

Hayden
212-995-3070
John Kazlaukas: 212.995.3076

Lafayette
212.992.1010
Molly Deugaw: 212.992.1013

NYU @ Seaport
Billy Felz: 212.863.9801

Palladium
212.998.4385
Mecca Scott: 212.998.4384

Rubin & 11th St
Anna Schmidt: 212.995.3101

Third North
212.995.3000
Peter Adamson: 212.995.3011

NYU Uptown
26th & 25th
Young Mi Choi: 212.995.3086

Uhall & W. 13th
TBA 212.443.3605

WSV & 14 WP
TBA 212.998.4211

Weinstein
Ryan Sylvester: 212.995.3044

School of Law Housing
240 Mercer Street
212.998.6510

School of Medicine Housing
550 First Avenue-Room 4-24L-N
212.263.5025

NYU School-Based Resources

College of Arts and Science
Richard Kalb
212.998.8140
Main Building, Rm 909B
New York, NY 10012

Willie Long
212.998.8130
Main Building, Rm 905
New York, NY 10012

Graduate School Arts/Science
Israel Rodriguez
212.998.8060
1/2 Fifth Ave

David Slocum
212.998.3970
6 Washington Square North
New York, NY 10012

School of Dentistry
Jeffrey Bengert
212.998.9831
345 East 24 Street, 1028W
New York, NY 10012

Novella Jones
212.998.9935
345 East 24 Street, 1028
New York, NY 10012

School of Education
Patricia Carey
212.998.5025
Pless Building, Room 332 MC: 4321
New York, NY 10012

Tisch School of the Arts
Elliot Dee
212.998.1902
721 Broadway 12th Floor
New York, NY 10012

School of Medicine
Mariano Rey
212.263.5667
Dean's Office 550 First Avenue
New York, NY 10012

Wagner School of Public Service
Ellen Lovitz
212.998.7415
4 Washington Square North Room 235W

School of Law
Yvette Bravo-Weber
212.998.6658
40 Washington Square South Room 424B

Gallatin School of Individualized Study
Fran Levin
212.998.7349
715 Broadway, Room 602
New York, NY 10012

Deirdre Aherne
212.998.7337
715 Broadway, Room 611
New York, NY 10012

School of Social Work
Wendy Maragh
212.998.9096
1 Washington Square North, Room G07
New York, NY 10012

Dina Rosenfeld
212.998.5944
1 Washington Square North, Room 304
New York, NY 10012

School of Continuing and Professional Studies
Sharr Prohaska
212.998.9109
10 Astor Place, room 504
New York, NY 10012

Anna Condoulis
212.998.7003
25 W 4 St, room 205
New York, NY 10012

Helen Wussow
212.992.9146
Shimkin Hall, Room 331

Steve Curry
212.998.7128
288 Shimkin Hall
New York, NY 10012

Stern School of Business
Carolyn Magnani
212.998.4002
Tisch, 40 West 4th Street, Room 805B

Halina Karachuk
212.998.0931
44 West 4th Street, Suite 6-130
New York, NY 10012

Cathy Cashion
212.998.0586
44 West 4th Street, Room 10-92
New York, NY 10012

Off-Campus Community Resources

National Hopeline Network
1.800.SUICIDE (1.800.784.2433)

LifeNet
800.LifeNet (543.3638)
Spanish: 877.298.3373
Asian: 212.254.2731

Samaritans of New York Suicide Prevention Hotline
212.673.3000
www.samaritansnyc.org

Help Line Telephone Services
212.532.2400
www.helpline.org

Covenant House National Nineline Hotlines
800.999.9999
www.covenanthouse.org

American Psychological Association HelpCenter
800-964-2000

For Help with Problems Common to College Students
www.campusblues.com

To Find a Therapist in Your Area
www.findcounseling.com

Other Links for Help and Therapy
www.lowermanhattan.info/health/links.asp