Savannah College of Art and Design Atlanta Counseling Center
Stress, Suicide, and the Savannah College of Art and Design
How an art schoolhouse in coastal Georgia is killing its students — and why no 1 is talking most it.
I was laying in bed. Information technology was in either December or January of 2016. I got a telephone call from an area code that I didn't recognize — from Savannah, Georgia.
A kindly elderly adult female on the other line informed me that I had been accepted to the Savannah College of Art and Design. I ran out of my room to tell my mom, watching telly on the couch. I forked over the $500 enrollment fee a couple months subsequently.
I'm a Southern daughter, who had been in and out of Atlanta all her life. I went to the opening of the Georgia Aquarium when I was 7 or 8. And I can remember, from when I was a little girl, wondering what that large building was, right as you were leaving Atlanta on I-24. It was clean, and pretty, with lots of plants. Elevated above the highway, I always idea it looked like a castle, even though it was clearly an academic building. Information technology was SCAD'south Atlanta campus, and its facade was a fixture of my childhood trips to the urban center.
The summertime before I started my freshman year in Savannah, my family visited Tybee Isle for vacation. We spent one solar day of our five-day getaway in downtown Savannah. I looked at all the live oaks, the moss, the onetime houses; information technology was cute. I couldn't await to come dorsum for proficient. I could see my futurity, a career in the arts. Passion projects completed. I was going to live my dream.
Halfway into the fall quarter of 2018, the start of my 2d year, I was huddled exterior of my dorm in Oglethorpe Business firm. Information technology was around eight o'clock AM. I was shaking all over. My phone was broken, then my roommate let me utilise her phone to call my mom. I told her that I needed to exit immediately. I hadn't slept since Sunday. It was Wednesday, Oct 17th, three days before my twentieth birthday.
It's tough to remember a lot of specific details nearly those final days at SCAD. I remember going to an urgent intendance clinic to become antidepressants. It was right nearly The Hive, where I stayed my freshman year and where many of the people I met the year before were residing. I tried to avoid the gaze of students waiting for the bus on the side of the road. I exercise recall crying near constantly.
I knew that it would be tough from the first. It was a lot of work; that's how it is at any art school. In my outset year, I adapted to the lack of slumber, working on drawings all night, getting charcoal under my fingernails. It was difficult work, but I enjoyed it. I fabricated some friends, I got a function-time job on campus. As the quarters progressed, it got tougher and tougher.
I kept hearing a popular phrase among students. "Sleep Comes After Death". A fun play on the college'due south acronym, and the amount of sleep we all lose. What struck me about the phrase is that it wasn't just the students saying so; my professors would jokingly say it in betwixt lectures. I don't know when or how it started, just I idea a lot about that phrase in the days and months following my withdrawal.
It unsettles me because three students died since the beginning of the 2018 academic yr. Two were ruled suicides.
We got an electronic mail whenever at that place was a expiry. It was always incredibly eerie. "SCAD mourns death of student," popped up in our emails, and anybody roughshod silent. Simply it was almost as if no one really cared. Information technology was difficult to care, because no one in the school seemed to care. The cause of death was well-nigh never disclosed, we had to find out ourselves. The cut-and-paste emails merely encouraged the students to achieve out to counseling services if they're grieving or having issues, only that presented a trouble.
Anybody who tries to get into counseling services usually has to await a month. I called a day before my breakdown, and, every bit expected, I was told that I would have to look. Those lucky few who have gotten into CS3 have said that the services the school offers are sub-par at best.
When my mom was driving down to the Georgia coast from our east Tennessee habitation, she called Bradley Hall's counselling services to try and get me firsthand assistance. She was told, plain, that they only had one psychiatrist that could prescribe me a medication, and that she would simply exist in the building 1 24-hour interval a week. A twenty-four hours after my breakdown, the 2nd suicide occurred within the fall quarter.
My question is this: At a university with several suicides a yr, where students await months to receive inadequate mental wellness care, where the president earns millions of dollars a year, the highest paid non-turn a profit college leader in the country, where students pay up of 50,000 a year to nourish, why is SCAD dragging its feet on providing better mental wellness care for students?
Possibly a more than advisable question, why practise so many SCAD students take their own lives?
The Savannah College of Fine art and Blueprint simply historic its 40th ceremony. It was established in 1978, by Richard and Paula Rowan, with only one building, Poetter Hall. As the years have gone past, the schoolhouse has expanded, and all just consumed historical downtown Savannah. On well-nigh every street you pass, you can notice an bookish or administration building, ordinarily a preserved historical building. I took my comics classes in an old hospice. I worked in a Freemason temple, across the street from the admissions building, formally an arsenal. Paula Rowan, now known as Paula Wallace, is still the head of the school.
They own the ii theaters on Broughton, the Trustee'due south Theater and the Lucas, domicile to the Savannah Moving picture Festival, bringing large names and directors to Georgia every year, and the event is organized entirely past SCAD. It'southward no surprise that when I think of the school, I call back of the thick Spanish moss covering nearly every oak tree. With SCAD, it'due south virtually every bit if Savannah has its own invasive species.
It's a visually lavish place. The choice of Savannah was well-idea out. A beautiful school in a beautiful town. But those who have worked at and attended SCAD are aware that beauty is merely skin-deep.
Information technology's hard to describe the general tone among kinesthesia and students. Everyone is just a little scrap "off". Us students are all eccentrics, with our ain weird quirks and beliefs, but there is a sense of hostility. I retrieve clearly, a senior in the Fashion department talking well-nigh the upcoming show, where only a few collections are chosen to walk the rails. She recalled stories of students coming into academic buildings after hours, and destroying others' garments. She tried to alleviate the tension she created in the classroom by quickly proverb that these actions were punished almost immediately by staff, but the impression had been made on me and the other freshman in the room.
The odd matter was that no one was uncommonly surprised. It'southward a tough matter to describe, but it's an understanding that hostility and frenemies are common in a competitive school environment, where you always feel judged. At a schoolhouse with class-wide critique, at some point, everyone has to play the critic. I remember, during the quarter in which I later dropped out, I received a pretty favorable critique of one of my projects. I was pretty pleased, but another student who had gotten her critique before mine looked not so much disappointed, but angry. She looked very upset with me for receiving a more favorable critique. Information technology's natural. We all want a practiced critique. But even though it was our very first projection, being relatively not as weighty on our averages, the stakes felt and then much college.
I don't mean to accuse my quondam professors of anything, considering I remember that it's by design. I liked all of my professors, I actually did. I just retrieve that they were expected to adopt a manner of pedagogy that fit with the school's ideas. I imagine the thought process is that they think pressure is the best way to encourage students to produce better work. Stress can be a wonderful motivator, simply for me and other students, it's a deterrent.
The workload is already intense, and then intense that classes aren't held on Fridays. Slumber impecuniousness is non only common, but expected. All-nighters are, at some point, a requirement for a full-time student who wants to do well. Non getting a good for you amount of slumber is treated like information technology'due south only role of the feel. And when you're in that environment, it'south difficult to realize how bizarre that is. Slumber Comes After Death. Sacrificing one'south own health for the ambiguous idea of "success" is not something new, but the "well, what can you practise" resignation paired with humor is questionable when students are passing out in the hallways, and dying with such frequency.
SCAD'south attendance policy does zip to aid the immense pressure placed on students. If y'all miss more than 4 sessions of a class, you are automatically dropped from information technology. This is the near common complaint among SCAD students, information technology being hard to get an excused absenteeism. A professor, on the first 24-hour interval of class, told the story of a educatee being hit past a bus and not beingness able to receive an excused absence. A supporter comment on a Change.org petition to improve mental wellness services (which y'all can sign here) shares her personal experiences with SCAD's strict policy.
"I'k signing because I had to drop a class when my grandma died. I'g signing because I got an absence when I got metal stuck in my eyeball and had to spend all day in the ER. I'm signing because my friend couldn't get an excused absence for chemo-therapy… I am signing because I care well-nigh myself and the well-being of my classmates. I am signing because something needs to modify."
Something common in the comments on the petition and other online forums is the stance that SCAD doesn't seem to intendance about its students. Information technology's a strange, unhappy reality that about SCAD students know: they are non valued by the school leaders. And when mental wellness and other services provided by the schoolhouse are and so lacking, it's hard not to agree. It's difficult non to concur the school somewhat answerable for vulnerable students taking their ain lives.
An outsider, looking at SCAD'south expensive accommodations and industry connections, would never know that these issues were present. This is because SCAD projects a very controlled public image. The university is very concerned with its reputation, peculiarly to prospective students. Having worked beyond from the admissions edifice, I met many of them. In the final couple weeks, it was tough working a shift and seeing kids so excited to attend, who had already been accepted. Of course I couldn't tell them to go someplace else; I was working in an establishment owned by the schoolhouse.
I remember every student realizes at some point that in that location is something very sinister lying beneath the veneer. Something was wrong. Certain professors would mention an incident in passing, and motility on very chop-chop. There was something spoken of vaguely, something bad that happened, but that was and then, and this is now, so we should move on. All we knew was that something happened effectually 20 years ago. They always presented it as something similar, disgruntled professors got upset, and so they got fired. No i always knew what was going on. And none of the professors wanted to talk virtually it. Then, after several of us expressed interest, one of my no-nonsense professors clued united states of america in. If he were to talk about information technology, he would also be fired.
I can't recall how I learned about what happened at SCAD Savannah in the early on nineties. Based on the way my professors spoke about it, I would never had guessed.
In the autumn of 1991, a graduate student at SCAD Savannah discovered the burning body on a pile of rags. It was the body of Juan Bertotto, an compages professor at the school. Another student jumped off of the roof of a downtown hotel. Another, senior Mike Walsh, went up to the roof of Habersham Hall, stripped naked, and jumped to his decease. All were ruled suicides.
The assistants response to the rash of deaths was to cover them upwards. Afterward Professor Bertotto's suicide, a coming together was called. A member of the faculty in attendance said, "The initial inclination was, 'how can we go along this quiet?'"
Just of course, it was impossible. A grouping of students began to pry into the diplomacy of the school assistants, asking about the deaths, among other things, such as misleading catalog entries, where their money was going, and why everything was kept and then undercover. Utter chaos followed. There were protests in Forsyth Park that reminded onlookers of Vietnam protests. They were calling for Richard and Paula Rowan to stride downwardly. Fifty-fifty worse, two pipage bomb explosions; one at the residence of the Rowans, and one at the loonshit at which the get-go ceremony is held, resulting in the graduation ceremony being cancelled. Professors got in on the action, creating a committee to question the administration in support of the students. Twelve professors were fired, including David Stout, who said this at a coming together.
"This is a schoolhouse, not a conspiracy… SCAD has a nighttime side. You tin't put your finger on it, only the symptoms are everywhere. Ask the faculty who have been intimidated for speaking out. Ask the students who accept signed documents guaranteeing their silence!"
In response to the public criticism that SCAD was receiving, the School of Visual Arts saw its chance, and announced its plans to open a Savannah location. SCAD administration started to claim conspiracy. The students and professors had been working with SVA to pave the mode for a competitor. Everyone was in on it — and it was planned from the start. The Rowans hired private investigators to watch those organizing the SVA branch, and erstwhile professors. Lawsuits followed. Two students not associated with the move were constitute guilty of the 2 bombings. All other matters were settled out of court. The full saga is documented in a Lingua Franca article from 1997, which tin be read in total in an annal hither.
Information technology reads similar a thriller. And I suddenly understood why they had been ordered to not talk about it. I had already dropped out when I read the story of the educatee and kinesthesia protest, but in that moment, I felt extreme sympathy for my professors. This may exist a good time to mention that SCAD was placed on the American Academy of University Professors' censure listing, for "unsatisfactory conditions of academic freedom", in 1993, and remains on that list today.
In that location are other stories of SCAD engaging in dubious activities regarding its public image. Publicist Bobby Zarem, who had worked on the Savannah Film Festival for a number of years, filed a lawsuit against the school in 2014, claiming that he was fired afterward reporting a sexual predator who had assaulted at least four women, who had disclosed their experience to him personally. Though the alleged predator was removed from campus, Zarem declared that Wallace had launched a cover-up. SCAD claimed that they airtight the investigation because they did not receive the names of the victims. There'southward other stories of covered up sexual assault, but only in whispers amidst former faculty and students.
At that place is too the effect of having an academic building named after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In wake of the Kavanaugh hearings, students started a petition to rename the building. The student who began the petition stated that they would like it named after Anita Hill.
More than in one case, students accept received food poisoning from the dining halls. Some have been treated poorly by school security. And of course, the high-paying salary of Paula Wallace. Someone attending SCAD is often under the impression that they've been swindled, almost without the information of their past controversies.
With this information in mind, it becomes articulate why SCAD wants to quietly sweep student suicides and other pupil complaints under the rug. Even when the events of the protest are not well-known, and are fading from virtually memories, the paranoia surrounding their public epitome remains. What they intendance about is receiving tuition, and if word of poor mental health care gets out, it could affect the number of their incoming freshmen. Information technology's why they focus on the number of students who become employed after graduation during orientation, not the percentage that drop out earlier then — over one-half of the freshman form, most within their first two years.
In retrospect, it'due south no surprise that my wellness declined in the style that information technology did. Between the near unmanageable amount of coursework, on top of having a part-time job, and the general attitude of students and faculty, I couldn't connect. I was a fine student, just I spent all of my fourth dimension in my dorm. I stopped eating properly. I started to dissociate and take random anxiety attacks. I started losing weight at an unbelievable pace; by the time I was back at dwelling house, I had lost xxx pounds in a thing of months. I thought all I needed was a summer of remainder, but my mental wellness continued to pass up heading into my second twelvemonth.
The incident that led to my breaking point was the first project in one of my studio classes. This was in the middle of a bad quarter; most of the people I knew weren't around me anymore, and the work but ever got harder. I got less and less sleep, and I started crying a lot, which was unlike me. It was essentially my midterm, I had stayed up for three days working on information technology, and hadn't eaten. All I had was java and other things to continue me going, caffeine-wise. It was 4 in the morning. I weighed my options, but and so I realized that I didn't have options. If I missed 1 more menstruum of my viii o'clock course, I would be flunked out. I couldn't skip to finish information technology. The project was due at 2 o'clock. Equally the time ticked on, and I got more tired, I got sloppier. My inking wasn't equally abrupt. It was a disaster. And I realized I wasn't going to finish information technology.
I panicked. Before I knew it, it was half-dozen o'clock. I started to hyperventilate and weep. I had never missed a deadline before. For me, my life was over. In that location was nil left for me to do. I put on my shoes and walked to the library. I had to scan and turn in what I had, I hateful, it was improve than a zero. I stumbled down the sidewalk, still sobbing.
I was still in forepart of my dorm when I said to myself in my head, "I can't do this anymore."
I made it to the library and submitted what I had done. I took the opportunity to e-mail all of my professors and tell them that I was going through a personal crisis, and that I would probably withdraw. To their credit, their responses were all very kind, and they told me to prioritize my health. It was foreign to compare the sympathetic attitudes of my professors to those of the administrative squad who helped facilitate my withdrawal. They desperately tried to get me to stay enrolled, and reminded me that I was all the same in the system, and that I could come back any fourth dimension.
My mother also tried to get me to finish my quarter starting time. She reasoned that then, I could transfer credits if I ever decided to come up dorsum. She eventually got the movie, given that whenever she mentioned standing or coming back, I bankrupt down in tears. I made information technology clear that my life would exist in danger if I stayed. I officially dropped out the following Monday, and came back abode.
It was a tough road. I began seeing my therapist regularly over again, and stayed on my medication. I got a seasonal job at a department shop. At my family unit's Thanksgiving, everyone in my extended family asked me how school was going. Inside 5 minutes of arriving, I was crying in the bath. I left early. Later, I went in to work our Blackness Friday auction. I started to have debilitating joint pain, which had me in tears past the stop of my shift. I later establish out this was a rare side issue of the medication I received at the clinic.
Since and so, it's gotten better. I'm on new medication that doesn't make me feel like I have arthritis. I've made my peace with being a dropout. Information technology doesn't make me a failure, I'yard but taking a different road. Only later on dropping out, I didn't draw for two months. I associated it with the stress I had to deal with at school. Something that once was so enjoyable to me that I considered it my career path was completely warped by my experience. If I find old art supplies, I sometimes get anxious but by the sight. Some things can never really go out you.
Of course, it wasn't all bad. My dominate and my coworkers are one the but things I tin look back on fondly. He's the best boss I've ever had. Simply then, I still remember the tension that overtook everyone on the clock when someone from assistants came in. Anxiety is everywhere. Everyone is afraid of whoever is higher up them. The students are afraid of their professors, the professors are agape of their department heads, the department heads are afraid of Paula Wallace. I've never had the experience of meeting her myself, though often her secretarial assistant came in to pick upward a smoothie for her. Opinions vary from savvy saleswoman to conniving dictator.
Savannah really is the perfect place for SCAD. Colonial cemeteries line the streets. Ghost tours populate the sidewalks. People tell stories of seeing glowing orbs at nighttime, or the ghost of Alice Riley in the former hanging square. It's a haunted city, its night past hidden by its natural and architectural beauty.
Recently, art schools, specifically CALarts, came nether burn for its loftier tuition costs. Simply in reality, there's more to lose than just money. From what I've seen since my withdrawal, SCAD has made no changes to their mental health services. If they have, allow me know. But I doubt that they'll own up. If history shows the states anything, accountability is not what the "A" stands for.
Bright-eyed high schoolers are all the same getting sucked in to SCAD'south looks, and it's all due to the efforts of school administration to bury what it perceives as negative attending. And yet, the reputation of the school simply continues to decline every bit it opts to encompass up tragedy, instead of taking responsibleness and improving atmospheric condition. SCAD, like the antebellum houses that it surrounds, is struggling to keep upwardly appearances, while hiding its dark history. And like an old house, its decomposable. It'due south a place of expiry, sleeplessness, and paranoia. It's a place where students are dropping similar flies, but no one seems to care. It's a place that nearly drove me mad.
SCAD is a beautiful nightmare. They hide poor conditions for students backside a squeaky-clean image. They hide a violent, turbulent history past silencing their professors. They're trading freshman tuition for the lives of the pupil body. And while many of the secrets of SCAD are only known to a few inside its community, some of united states get in out alive. Nosotros have the power. We can generate public pressure. We tin make a change.
Outside of the customs, nosotros have power because in that location'due south naught that assistants can practise to silence the states. They can't threaten our jobs, or our enrollment status. We tin can say the truth without fright, and we should. I don't desire anyone else to become through what I did. I don't want anyone else to lose their coin. I don't want anyone else to kill themselves. I desire accountability. I want students and professors to have a vocalism. I want justice for those who have lost their lives due to the school's ain negligence.
I could've been the tertiary suicide at SCAD in the fall of 2018. I was sold a pretty lie. I lost. But no one else has to lose.
Source: https://medium.com/@stephaniefranklinmarr/stress-suicide-and-the-savannah-college-of-art-and-design-2e02197ddd65
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