If there was ever any doubt about where student mental health falls on Penn’s list of priorities, the University’s latest failure should put it to rest.
For years, students have urged Penn to confront the shortcomings of its mental health support system. But that mission is impossible without prioritizing the people behind the work — including College House Fellows, the faculty or staff members who live on campus and double as mentors, caregivers, and a first line of support during moments of crisis.
Earlier this year, Penn’s division of College Houses and Academic Services informed Hill College House Fellows Elizabeth and Robert Scheyder that their appointments would not be renewed for another two‑year cycle.
College House Fellows are faculty or staff members who “engag[e] with residents, in ways spontaneous and planned, formal and informal.” In this part-time role, Fellows can double as mentors and de facto advisors, with the extent of their day-to-day involvement in students’ lives often left to their own discretion. During their tenure, the Scheyders have served as points of contact for first-year students in the Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research, and in a 2021 email, then-CHAS leadership described the Scheyders’ “programming and engagement with residents” as “exceptional.”
I lived in Hill my freshman year, but until news of the Scheyders’ non-renewal became public, I’d never had a conversation with either of them personally. But soon, I was sitting in their apartment hearing firsthand how CHAS told them they would have to move out by June 15, even as they insisted on staying through the end of the semester to honor their contract.
First reported in The Daily Pennsylvanian earlier this month, the case that pulled the trigger began when a fellow Penn student called the Scheyders at night, asking if a peer in distress could come to them. Official guidance routes such emergencies through PennComm, the University’s 24/7 dispatch line, and the co-responder model Penn uses requires both a mental health clinician and a Penn Police officer to respond to crises. However, the student, who’d expressed suicidal intent, had a wariness of police based on past experiences and said that they would run away if officers arrived on the scene. So Elizabeth called Penn’s psychiatric emergency center instead, walked the student over for an evaluation, and filed an incident report requesting no police follow-up.
Robert told me that the psychiatrist from the emergency center advised against sending the student back to an empty room or having them wake up to a roommate, and instead suggested they stay with the Scheyders overnight. According to the Scheyders’ account, the student then remained in their apartment under supervision, sleeping on the same sofa where I sat during our conversation.
The next morning, police showed up at the student’s dorm anyway, escorting them out of the apartment and through Hill. Robert recalled that the process was like a “perp walk,” adding that the officers were in plain clothes, but, in his view, that did little to reduce the visibility of the encounter.
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The University’s concerns with “patterns of decision-making that may introduce risk for students” may have sidelined what was initially a routine renewal process. Because House Fellows “serve at the pleasure of the Provost,” Penn has the discretion to decline renewal without cause. However, its materials don’t explain when or how the University can move away from standard procedures. And a process that doesn’t give those involved a fair chance to present their side undermines the legitimacy of its outcomes, especially in situations where good-faith disagreement about best action is foreseeable.
Without the incident report and records from PennComm or Penn Police, we can’t determine who ordered the follow-up and why. Jen Ciaccio, executive director of CHAS, and the Office of the Provost did not respond to requests for comment. And based on what is publicly available right now, which amounts to the DP piece and a handful of CHAS policy documents, the termination is not a good look for Penn.
Of course, CHAS’s protocol exists for a reason. Fellows are not licensed clinicians and are not supposed to be making solo triage calls at two in the morning, and the whole point of having a system is that individuals don’t freelance around it. The next Fellow who makes unilateral decisions to route around Penn’s emergency systems might derail, and the institution could face liability for failing to adhere to its own protocols.
But even as this system fails us, Penn protects the administrators who designed it. The student in question only received necessary care because Elizabeth broke protocol — ironically, the outcome that Penn has committed to in a recent initiative to “build trust with those [it] serves.” And, rather than fixing the policies that made Elizabeth break the rules, the University scapegoats lower-level employees for the failure of the system itself.
Robert said that by the time the Scheyders received the termination notice, the University had already hired a replacement. Whatever its internal reasoning, the University has communicated publicly that following your training to the letter, regardless of the situation, matters more than the outcome for the student in front of you. Unfortunately, Penn will not attract the people it wants in campus houses if that is the condition of being there.
MRITIKA SENTHIL is a junior from Columbia, S.C. Her email is mritikas@upenn.edu.
