Research Paper with the articles provided

Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, 24:284–294, 2010 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 8756-8225 print/1540-4730 online DOI: 10.1080/87568225.2010.509225

Mandatory Counseling: Clinical Beneficence or Malevolence?

GERALD AMADA City College of San Francisco (Retired), San Francisco, California, USA

Mandatory counseling is a widespread and commonly accepted practice on college campuses throughout the nation. This prac- tice bestirs heated controversy and ethical challenges when col- lege administrators require students to undergo counseling in instances of misconduct that pose little danger to self or others. Apparently many counselors actively and approvingly under- take mandatory therapy with students; others take exception and decline to undertake involuntary counseling; and still others acquiesce by undertaking mandatory counseling with students despite their ethical objections to this coercive clinical practice. This article will highlight the rationales for ethical objections to mandatory counseling.

KEYWORDS coercive clinical measures, ethical challenges, ethi- cal compromises, mandatory counseling

The massacre that took place at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University on April 16, 2007, sent shock waves throughout the college cam- puses of our nation. In the wake of this heinous crime, repeated reference has been made to how this staggering shock to our collective psyches will be a “wake-up call” to empower us to take the right and sensible mea- sures to make colleges and universities safer institutions. Many colleges have made evident progress in the aftermath of Virginia Tech in marshalling a multiplicity of on-campus strategies and resources (such as risk-assessment teams comprised of clinical, instructional, judicial, and administrative staff) to identify and quell the insubordination of highly disruptive and potentially dangerous students.

Address correspondence to Gerald Amada, PhD, 185 Mt. Lassen Drive, San Rafael, CA 94903, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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At the same time, however, increasing numbers of nervous colleges have arbitrarily engineered their students into mandatory counseling and psychotherapy without due regard for the constitutional rights of these students. For example, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) investigated and reported the case of a student at Valdosta State University (VSU) in Georgia who was expelled for being “a clear and present danger” and was mandated to submit certifications of his men- tal health and ongoing therapy as conditions of his readmission to the college because the student peacefully protested the school’s decision to construct two new parking decks on campus and posted flyers detail- ing potential alternatives. The University of Georgia System’s Board of Regents reversed the expulsion of the student after he filed a federal law- suit against VSU for violating his constitutional rights. Although the student was officially reinstated, he refused to return to the campus, considering the university to be a hostile environment (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, 2010).

Similarly, the Review Panel of the Governor of Virginia in its document titled Mass Shootings at Virginia Tech recommended: “The troubled student should be required to participate in counseling as a condition of contin- ued residence in campus housing and enrollment in classes” (“Report of the Virginia Tech Review Panel,” 2007, p. 54). This sweeping, generic use of the term “troubled” could serve as grounds for shanghaiing into counseling virtually any Virginia college student who evinces the slightest unconven- tionality in speech or behavior that just happens to upset a thin-skinned instructor or administrator.

Mandatory college counseling and assessment has become com- mon practice on college campuses. According to the National Survey of Counseling Center Directors (Gallagher, 2009), 34% of the centers accept mandated referrals from judicial boards or administrators for both assessment and counseling. Based on my own observations I tend to believe that many of these colleges conflate the terms “assessment” and “counseling”; in other words, mandatory assessments are often extended and transformed into mandatory counseling sessions because many colleges, wishing to carefully monitor the ongoing progress of mandated students and thereby minimize their risk potential, prefer to keep them in open-ended counseling sessions as long as necessary. It is worth noting that this survey also reports that 64% of counseling directors are ambivalent about mandatory counseling but acknowledge that some students can be helped in this way. This par- ticular statistic raises some fascinating questions of considerable heuristic value. If some counseling center directors are accepting mandatory referrals despite their ethical qualms, it would be worth knowing what political, insti- tutional, and clinical factors have compelled them to make quiescent ethical compromises of this kind. Identifying and elucidating these factors might in time enable college counselors to discover and assert effective alternatives

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to the practice of accepting ethically questionable demands for mandatory counseling.

I believe it is fair and necessary to forewarn readers that this article is a polemic, a set of rationales and arguments used to debunk, combat, and, if at all possible, abolish the practice of mandatory psychotherapy on college campuses when it is enlisted by administrators to deal with students who pose no imminent danger to self or others—an administrative practice that has become quite prevalent throughout our nation’s colleges.

INVOLUNTARY COUNSELING: WHY IT’S UNNECESSARY

I will here begin by stating the obvious: no counselor with an ounce of sense can legitimately object to the practice of mandatory counseling and assess- ment for persons who pose an imminent danger to themselves or others or are gravely psychologically disabled. However, I am entirely convinced on the basis of consultations I have had with over 130 colleges and universities nationwide that the imposition of mandatory therapy on college campuses is most often used to deal with students who have engaged in some form of nondangerous misconduct, such as disruptions in the classroom or dormi- tory. For the remainder of this paper my remarks about mandatory therapy will exclusively relate to nondangerous cases of disruptive misconduct rather than those that pose an imminent danger to self or others, the former clearly constituting the majority of cases referred for mandatory counseling.

Administrators Passing the Buck

The institutional source of referrals for most cases of mandatory counseling is most often the office of a college administrator, who usually has not referred the student because he or she is demonstrably dangerous but rather because the administrator is attempting to avoid the use of a disciplinary sanction in dealing with a disruptive student. The reasons administrators turn to col- lege counselors with requests for the imposition of mandatory therapy are many and certainly require analysis and elucidation. Some administrators are averse to administering discipline—even though this unsavory task is an integral part of their job—because they feel guilty or anxious about a disciplinary procedure they mistakenly believe is inherently punitive. As a result, they refer the disruptive student to a counselor in the fanciful belief that counseling is necessarily a kinder and gentler procedure while casu- ally disregarding the strong possibility that many students, especially highly disruptive, “externalizing” students who are being shunted into treatment under a disciplinary cloud, are in great dread of undergoing a counseling experience that requires a requisite capacity for intimacy, self-disclosure, introspection, and psychological sophistication. Clearly, many disruptive