Why We Need Mental Health Days at Exeter

Students were screaming and jumping around, hugging each other and shedding tears when we all received that special email with the subject line: “Important notice to all Exonians: SNOW DAY” from Principal Lisa MacFarlane. Snapchat stories showed people celebrating by lying in bed all day or having dance parties with friends. Students posted Instagram pictures portraying them playing in the snow or sledding down the hill outside Soule Hall. Everyone was smiling and laughing.

I think the reaction of students to having a snow day perfectly shows that Exeter needs to incorporate mental health days as another option Exonians can use when they aren’t feeling well enough to go to classes and would rather spend some time by themselves, but not have to go to the Health Center. It could be for a day, or for a few formats. The fact that people were being moved to tears for having a day off should say something about how stressed and overwhelmed students feel. Student Council (StuCo) did talk about having mental health days at one point last year, but nothing ever happened. I think we should definitely start that conversation again.

Mental health days should be for students who aren’t emotionally prepared enough to go to class and to face the stressful, high demands of Exeter. For example, if a student’s family member passes away, they should be able to use a mental health day to be by themselves and cope with their loss if they think that they would be better off by themselves rather than with a counselor. That’s more of an extreme example, but if someone is feeling really emotionally distracted, doesn’t feel prepared enough to go to class or would feel that they can cope with their problems better if they’re by themselves, then they should be able to skip class and not get the punishment of a dickey.

The main concern that StuCo had with this was that students would find ways to abuse the mental health day and use it when they really didn’t need to. However, if you think about it, the fact that some people actually need this when they’re emotionally struggling definitely outweighs the fact that some people will abuse it; the benefits outweigh the negatives. With “fatigues,” it is not news that students use them when they want to skip a test—an abuse of the system. Like fatigues, people would need to make up the work for the classes they miss. If anything, this would reduce the desire for students to abuse the proposed mental health day. In the end, it could help students to not crack under the pressures that Exonians face daily.

Another concern that was expressed with having a mental health day is privacy. If someone doesn’t want to give a reason as to why they aren’t feeling well enough to go to class because of a private, personal issue, would they have to tell people their reasons? I think that as long as the Health Center knows, or the student’s advisor—whoever the student trusts more—then there’s no need to tell one’s teacher the reason why one may need time to themselves. All the teacher needs to know is that the student needs a break.

The ideas that I present are all hypothetical, but if we could all come together as a community and work on creating policies to make a mental health day a part of our life here at Exeter, I strongly believe that that would be beneficial to our community’s overall mental health. It is important for us to be able to have time to ourselves, especially as Exonians; being at Exeter demands a lot from everyone, and it can be very overwhelming. I think that if we were to incorporate mental health days into our life at Exeter, then students would be a lot happier and a lot less emotionally overwhelmed.