The Campus Life and Safety and Security Task Force is requesting $16 million today for mental health counseling and notification and response systems at state universities, it announced Wednesday.
The task force said they would like to make mental health counseling more available to students on campus to prevent a crisis before it starts.
“The stories that you hear about, that grab headlines, are those stories where folks didn’t get the treatment that they needed, and they are very rare,” said Terri White, Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance abuse services commissioner. “We want to make sure that a portion of the $16 million budget ensures that our campuses have the ability to provide these services.”
The task force hopes the cost per student for mental counseling would be close to $100, said Melissa Houston, Oklahoma Chief of Staff for the Director of Homeland Security.
The group has also working on advancing response systems in the event of an emergency and there have been significant improvements.
“In the event something happened, a student would be allowed to notify faculty members by the use of cell phones through text messaging,” said Glen Johnson, Chancellor of the Oklahoma State System of Higher Education.
There has also been a significant increase in the cooperation with local law enforcement officials and local emergency responders on campuses across the state, he said.
Johnson said the task force has opposed legislation that would allow the presence of concealed weapons on campuses and is prepared to take the same position if it comes back in the upcoming legislative session.
“The task force is prepared to join many other law enforcement officials, our staff, our parents, our faculty, our veterans organizations again very aggressively to take the position that, although this legislation may be well intentioned, we believe [it] would not provide an environment where our campuses would be safe,” Johnson said. “In fact the very opposite would occur.”
Gov. Brad Henry created the group two weeks after the shooting at Virginia Tech, making the group one of the first of it’s kind in the country.
The group still has some opposition, though.
Apathy is the biggest problem the task force is facing, Houston said.
“We first addressed the issue of school security two years ago by creating the first ever school security grant program in the country,” she said.
They started with $50,000 in government funds to create a competitive grant program for elementary schools and for security funding, Houston said. The task force has dedicated $250,000 for K-12 schools this year because of the accomplishments of the program, she said.
“The security of our schools has been one of the most frightening and critical aspects of our work,” Houston said.
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Bubba 3 years, 4 months ago
This is the terrific news for OU. There are incredible pressures as a student, and with the burden of a strapped economy and unclear future stability, every resource must be taken advantage of. Real Men Go To Therapy!
(Plus, this could help those of us suffering from the outcome the BCS game....)
Bubba Hotep