This brief, engaging suicide prevention video was created for all Texas institutions of higher education to raise awareness and promote strategies to address suicidality among students of all ages and backgrounds. The video includes warning signs and emphasizes that help and resources are available on campus and in the community. The intended audience is incoming first-year, transfer, graduate, and professional students, though it is also appropriate for current students — and those who work with them.
The 6-minute video features actor portrayals and attractive animation for three stories with universal themes taken from real stories and research. The video was created by The University of Texas at Austin’s Division of Student Affairs and Center for Health Communication in collaboration with Arts and Labor, and was funded by The University of Texas System.
Pictures speak louder than words. And emotions move people more than rationality. And the harsh words that Mike Newman (aka Ekim Namwen) speaks in his video "college is bullsh*t" express the anger and depression of a 30-something year old Ohio State graduate who gets it. While Newman's work is thoughtful and original, the emotions are common in many once-aspiring graduates from state flagship universities who never quite get ahead.
If you can deal with the critical tone and the emotions expressed in this video, it's well worth looking at it from start to finish. If not, start looking at it from 28:30. Newmans's intent has been to finish a serious decade-long documentary on higher education, but two recent suicides at OSU led him to speak out against the madness of higher education: its outrageous costs, its greedy anti-labor administration, and its uncaring bureaucracy.
The College Meltdown has been going on for more than a decade, and things are getting worse. Books critical of higher education could fill a book case or two. That's admirable. And of course, there are some great exceptions amid the meltdown, such as free community college, and potential free market innovations such as TuitionFit, but the general direction of US higher education is downward.
We
can't blame the problems of higher ed just on higher education. US
inequality has been increasing for a half century, and it displays
itself across society, from "savage inequalities"
in the college pipeline to how end of life is medicalized and made so
expensive, at the expense of state and federal budgets.
But there has to
be some recognition of the damage that has been done by business minded
college administrators and college boards, by the madness of crushing student loan debt and underemployment, and the system that turns almost everything good into sh*t.