CURRENT ISSUE :: DECEMBER 2002 :: ON CAMPUS

A Friend
In Need

When a Fellow Student
Is Falling, You Are Part
Of the Safety Net

By HARLAN COHEN
Special to The Wall Street Journal

Welcome to the holiday season! This means lots of gifts. In the spirit of giving, I wanted to deliver you my most important column to date. Sure, they are all important, but this one might save you or your friend’s life. Please read it. Remember it. And if you don’t agree with me, you can always use it to wrap a gift to give to a friend. That’s important, too.

Illustration by Stephen Salerno

College is a place with freedom like you’ve never experienced before. You have the freedom to make new friends, stay out all hours, seek out a major and make a lot of mistakes. Some of the pitfalls include alcohol abuse, drug abuse, gambling and eating disorders. Without question, college has a safety net to help students who are falling—counselors, resident assistants, hotlines and the like. But unfortunately, not everyone lands in it. There is just enough freedom for a student to fall outside the net.

That’s where you come in. When you head off to a campus with thousands of strangers, you need to look for friends who will look out for you. And when you see a friend falling, it’s time for you to step up and BE the safety net.

Like most students, Jessica Jellison started her college journey without hesitation and with great anticipation. Her two older sisters had attended the huge University of Missouri in Columbia, and she was ready to take her turn. Having graduated from a tiny high school in rural Missouri, she was looking forward to something completely different.

It was different all right, and difficult. Four semesters later, she would find herself lost, in treatment, and leaving the new campus forever.

‘No One Knew My Name’

 In high school, Jessica recalls, “I didn’t have to try hard for my grades or status.” She was a popular, straight-A student and an accomplished musician. But in college, she says, the classes were bigger, the workload was heavier, and she was unsure about a major. Socially, she didn’t connect with her sorority sisters. Her on-again, off-again high-school boyfriend was off-again. “No one knew my name,” she says. Few people even noticed her. “I didn’t feel like I had as much control,” she says. It was a confusing, unfamiliar experience. And she had to find some way to deal with it.

The summer following her freshman year, she lost a few pounds. She wasn’t trying to lose weight—she was just controlling her diet and exercising more. But when she returned to college in the fall, people started paying attention. They told her how good she looked. “I didn’t look at it as negative feedback—maybe in a way, I felt like people were starting to notice me again,” she says.

Ever the perfectionist, Ms Jellison soon perfected the art of cutting calories, running long distances, and hiding her eating disorder from her parents while home on breaks. But clearly, her friends knew that she was hurting herself. They saw her skip meals. They saw that she was withdrawn and antisocial. One spring afternoon, she and her sorority sisters were studying in the backyard wearing bathing suits. One girl commented, “Jessica, you look hungry.” But no one did anything about it or offered to help.

At one point, Jessica noticed that someone had anonymously posted fliers in the sorority hallway listing campus eating-disorder resources. But she took them down and threw them away. Still, no one said anything to her. She just continued to fall and fall. Her friends watched as her weight plummeted from 120s to the low 90s.

In the end, it was Jessica’s own sister who noticed her weight loss, and her mother who decided to do something. She alerted a doctor on campus. The doctor admitted Jessica into the hospital, against her will, the week before finals. She was diagnosed with anorexia.

Jessica doesn’t blame her friends for saying nothing—not at all. But I do. No one alerted a therapist on campus. No one contacted her parents. No one talked to her about it. No one helped guide her into the safety net that is part of college. They didn’t do what friends are supposed to do.

Easy to Ignore

 After Jessica was admitted for treatment, close friends would tell her that they didn’t know how to help. “A lot of people like to ignore the fact that someone is hurting,” she says. “It’s easier to ignore than to confront it.”

Now a junior at a smaller UM campus in Kansas City, Jessica urges other students not to take the easy way out. Help a friend, she says, even if a friend doesn’t want help. Whether it’s drinking, drugs, anorexia or depression, you’re the one who is most likely to recognize a friend in trouble on campus, and you’re the one who can guide this person to help. You just have to make the effort. Says Jessica: “It’s worth having people mad at you compared to saving someone’s life.”

My college roommate would say the same thing. He’s alive today because we helped him.

The short story—he was drinking too much one night and vomited a little blood in the early morning. He slept if off. The next morning, he was tired, but went to classes. We saw him later that afternoon, and he looked horrible. We insisted that he go to the hospital or call an ambulance. He insisted he was fine.

Again, he went to his room to sleep it off. This time, we forced him to the hospital. Within minutes of his arrival, he was in surgery. He had been bleeding internally all day. Had he slept it off, he would have died in his room.

Yes, college is an incredible place filled with incredible freedom, but along with freedom comes responsibility—not just to yourself, but to your friends. When that safety net fails, you’re their only hope.