I cried on my way back to Amherst. My parents were driving me to campus before this fall semester started. I was looking out of the window as we passed tree after tree and hill after hill, when I was washed with an overwhelming sense of gratitude.
I finally have the freedom to shape my own education, I thought. The freedom to explore what is meaningful to me. The freedom to be myself. To have my parent’s support through this process is one of the best forms of love and acceptance I’ll ever get.
But being thankful is not enough. 95% of sexual assaults on campuses are unreported. 52% of Amherst students “felt so depressed it was difficult to function” and 8% attempted suicide. We all have struggles and fears and vulnerabilities. Many other forms of inequality, repression, and suffering that plague this world affect all of us.
We’re here at Amherst not only to appreciate what we have, but also to support each other. We’re here to learn what it means to care. At the end of the day, we all want is to understand and to be understood.
So, my challenge for all of us is to go beyond thankfulness. Tell someone how important he or she is to you. Call a friend who you’ve been meaning to talk to. Meet someone new. Learn what it is like to truly listen to someone without creating a counter argument while he or she is still talking. Be there for the person. Human connection— that’s all we really have in this world.
-Vivian Mac
Defining Amherst 
I think your message is a good one, and I like your advice. But you’re unclear by citing those statistics the way you do, and it’s frustrating that whoever put together that handbook was more interested in having a shocking statistic than in really exploring what’s going on.
You and the SSN make it sound like “52% of Amherst students are currently so depressed it’s difficult to function”, and when I looked up the reference, that’s the figure for the survey population over their entire lives. In the past two weeks, 10.3% feel that way. That’s a lot of people, and it’s important for all of us to know that we’re not alone in suffering from depression, and that likewise our friends might be going through a really rough time that we’re not aware of. But it’s really, really different from “over half of Amherst students”, and it doesn’t make sense to conflate those numbers.
Anyway, like I said, I appreciate the idea behind your post. But I think it’s important that if you’re going to cite data to make a point like this, you don’t do so misleadingly.
Have a happy Thanksgiving!
Hi Monroe,
I agree that “felt so depressed it was difficult to function” is a vague description, but what I got from the statistic is not that 52% of Amherst students have depression, but that 52% have experienced depressive states. (This was from the 2012 ACHA assessment for Amherst College, but I cannot seem to find the actual report specific to our college so I didn’t elaborate beyond that. And I think you got the 10.3% data from the 2013 national assessment? http://www.acha-ncha.org/docs/ACHA-NCHA-II_UNDERGRAD_ReferenceGroup_DataReport_Spring2013.pdf) I did not intend to mislead, sorry if my message didn’t come across. My intention was to show that many of us have struggled from unhappiness/hopelessness and that it is more common than we think. Of course, mental health is a big issue (8% “attempted suicide,” according to the ACHA 2012 National College Health Assessment for Amherst).
Thank you for commenting, and have a great Thanksgiving!
Vivian