College Students Call Police, Seek Counseling After Seeing Mouse

Writing on the increasing fragility of the American college student, Dr. Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College, detailed in Psychology Today about different cases where young adults showed an astounding inability to cope with minor hurdles in their lives. His article is titled “Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges” and was published last week.

One incident that Dr. Gray describes is when two students saw a mouse in their off-campus apartment.

According to Dr. Gray, the students saw the mouse, panicked, and called the police. The police responded to the call, then set up a mouse trap for the startled students.

The students then sought counselling for what they had been through.
Dr. Gray explains that he has received emails from other college professors and Counselling Services which claim, “Less resilient and needy students have shaped the landscape for faculty in that they are expected to do more handholding, lower their academic standards, and not challenge students too much.”

Other statements from faculty include, “Faculty, particularly young faculty members, feel pressured to accede to student wishes lest they get low teacher ratings from their students. Students email about trivial things and expect prompt replies.”

As well as, “There is a sense of helplessness among the faculty. Many faculty members expressed their frustration with the current situation. There were few ideas about what we could do as an institution to address the issue.”

Dr. Gray concludes, “If we want to prepare our kids for college—or for anything else in life!—we have to counter all these social forces. We have to give our children the freedom, which children have always enjoyed in the past, to get away from adults so they can practice being adults, that is, practice taking responsibility for themselves.”