More than 150 Harvard University students gathered in front of the offices of the president and other administrators to protest for mental health policy reform on Friday afternoon, The Harvard Crimson reported. Students shared experiences with Harvard's health services and displayed a list of demands to the administration. The demonstrators declined an offer from Harvard's assistant dean for student life to sit down inside with administrators and the university's director of health services. The rally was sparked by an anonymous op-ed published by The Crimson on Thursday by a student with schizophrenia. The demonstration accompanies the announcement of several new Harvard initiatives for student mental health.
The White House announced a new policy on Friday allowing greater public access to research by federal agencies, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. In the next six months, agencies that spend $100 million or more in federal funds each year must make plans detailing how they will meet the policy's new requirements. The agencies are required to make their research findings available to the public within one year of publication and must release scientific data from federally-funded unclassified research projects, according to a memorandum issued by John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. As part of the discourse leading up to the policy's creation, more than 65,000 people signed an online petition on the White House's "We the People" website, advocating for free online access to scientific journal articles based on research that taxpayer money supports, the report said.
Last week, a video produced by immigration reform advocacy campaign The Dream Is Now featured University of California, Berkeley student Terrence Park, who was admitted to the Yale School of Public Health but does not qualify for federal financial aid because of his undocumented status, according to the Yale Daily News. Earlier this year, student immigration advocacy group Connecticut Students for a DREAM helped create a bill to allow undocumented students to receive financial aid at public and private institutions in the state using an application process that would not require a Social Security number. Though recently tabled, there is still a possibility that it will be passed as an amendment to other legislation. Only a small number of undocumented immigrants currently earn graduate degrees in the Northeast, according to the Daily News.
Compiled by Laura Weiss
