Ultra Vires

UV-Full-Logo-White-Text-Transparent-Background-1024x251

More Muffins, Less Madness: A Response to Leo Elias

Last month, Leo Elias wrote an enlightening, thought-provoking article for this publication called “Less Muffin, Less Madness: How Crippling Tuition Fees Make the Administration’s Health and Wellness Initiative Seem Hollow.”  Essentially, his view is as follows: in light of the administration’s consistent refusal to open up discussion about our school’s rapidly skyrocketing tuition rates – a tremendous source of stress and anxiety for the great majority of students – its decision to launch the Health and Wellness Student Advisory Committee (HWSAC) seems like an empty gesture.  After all, surely HWSAC initiatives – promoting yoga, serving smoothies, the oft-parodied Doggy Days and the like – can be little more than window dressing in the face of a staggering debt load?

I share Leo’s frustrations with what I believe to be an untenable tuition situation – not to mention the needless stress inflicted by 100% exams – and I’m delighted that he chose to speak out about these problems in such precise and incisive terms.  Yet I’ve been a member of HWSAC since its inception, I love the work, and I plan to stay there.

This is why I think that maintaining both of these perspectives is not only possible, but essential to getting anything done:

(1) Systemic Change Takes Time

You have all heard the cliché that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”  Well, this is one of those phrases that became clichéd for a reason.  Yes, I find it troubling and sad that the administration isn’t willing and/or able to address the alarming pitfalls of its tuition and exam policies.  But I’m delighted that it is now willing – and indeed seemingly pleased – to discuss student health and wellness, which until the relatively recent past were considerably more taboo than topics like tuition and exams.

It’s tough to struggle with mental illness – and let’s not forget other forms of chronic illness in this conversation – both because it inherently sucks to have to deal with these things, and also because the struggle is so often secret.  Why?  Because health-related topics have been so heavily stigmatized, and the price for openness can be immense.  And let’s be real here: even students fortunate enough not to be “diagnosable” with anything must often struggle constantly to maintain their physical and mental health, often with less than ideal success.

I couldn’t agree more that addressing systemic stress-inducing problems with our financial and pedagogical structures would be immensely helpful.  But I also want to celebrate the fact that we can even discuss the impact of these factors on student mental health in a climate of relative openness and acceptance.  That is not a small victory, nor is it yet assured.  HWSAC aims to make it so.

(2) It’s Good to Break Down the Problem

HWSAC’s focus is to promote student health and wellness through a wide range of feasible means.  Yes, sadly, structural reform lies outside our means, and our mandate.  But happily (…?!), law school is stressful both due to these factors, and because of the usual range of unrelated external factors that happen in life.  And again, let’s get real here: it’s also stressful because we collectively create a climate where a high-functioning façade must often be maintained and our perceived failures must generally be hidden.  (How many students do you know who’ve gotten a C?  …Is it zero?  Hmm.)  And we feel compelled to hide our perceived weakness and failings in part because they sometimes make us feel ashamed much more than is healthful – or rational.

HWSAC can’t fix tuition.  It can’t fix exams.  But here’s what it can do:

-HWSAC can promote healthy behaviors, both physical and mental, that most of us know we should engage in, but somehow generally don’t.  (Of course we know that we ought to get sleep and eat right and exercise and reduce stress … in theory.)  It can offer tips and suggestions and “hacks” that will help students to actually do this stuff.

-It can chip away at that culture of smiles and lies.

-On that note, if you’d like to help out with either of these, we always welcome contributions and suggestions for the newly launched Meeting of the Minds blog: http://lawmeetingminds.wordpress.com.  We’re covering an assortment of topics from lifestyle tips (your basic food/sleep/exercise hacks); how to increase efficiency, manage stress and prevent procrastination; as well as students’ honest – optionally anonymous – perspectives on physical and mental health topics.  So please drop us a line at http://lawmeetingminds.wordpress.com.

-And yes, HWSAC can offer solace that, while perhaps short-lived, can at the same time be memorable and meaningful.  (Smoothies and Doggy Days, I’m looking at you.)

(3) Wellness Is Key a priori 

This point should be self-evident, but let me reiterate.  Whether or not these proactive steps (and attempts at a cultural paradigm shift) ever get the administration to the table about tuition, working to improve our health and wellness is still a good plan. Our future careers will generally involve a lot of stress and debt and ridiculous metrics to assess our performance, so it is tremendously in our interest to learn to deal with such things with some measure of balance, grace, and grit.

…Also, being happier is generally more fun.

(4) Improved Health and Wellness Prepare You for Battle

But this is the main problem with the argument that goes, “Health and Wellness is distracting window dressing – we’d better not support it.”  Fighting for one’s causes is exponentially more difficult when one is exhausted, or unstable, or just sad.  In fact, Leo pointed this out himself: “1Ls focus on getting good marks, 2Ls focus on getting a job, and 3Ls are either too exhausted or too indifferent to combat any issue.”  Many of us just don’t have the energy to fight the good fight.

So I plan to work hard to maintain and improve my own health and wellness – which, like most of ours, at times badly needs this extra attention.  I plan to use, and to generate, as many tips from Meeting of the Minds as seem relevant and feasible for my life and goals.  And I will definitely be attending future Doggy Days and making myself free smoothies as the opportunity presents, because dogs are cuddly and smoothies are tasty and hey, I’ll welcome the chance to take a brief, distracting, endorphin-producing break.

I’m not unaware of, or in denial about, the many unresolved systemic problems that HWSAC can’t address.  It’s precisely because I am aware of them – not to mention the broader systemic problems that I aim to spend my career addressing – that I’m motivated to stay involved with HWSAC.

Window-dressing does not interest me.  Rather, I want to fight – for many things, for many years – and I need to be alive and well to do so.

[Note: This article represents the opinion of one (fabulous) member of the HWSAC and not the committee as a whole.]

Recent Stories