The historic victory of President Trump on November 5 has secured him a second term as the American President. But it has also left many leftists and Trump-haters insecure, many to the degree that they are experiencing an acute mental health crisis. A good many of these never-Trumpers are youth studying at educational institutions that have taken special measures to address their mental health issues.
Many students at Harvard University, one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the country and the world, were so upset at the news of Trump’s victory on November 5 that some professors chose to cancel their classes for the day after the election. The university’s newspaper The Harvard Crimson reported that Wednesday classes in various disciplines including sociology, mathematics, and general education were either canceled or attendance was made optional to let students absorb the psychological shock of Trump’s victory.
Some professors at the university extended the deadlines for submitting assignments and a physics professor emailed her students to inform them that her office would be “a space to process the election.”
The story included several statements by Trump-hating students and wrote about the need for the institution to address their worries like in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary Clinton to claim his first term as the President:
The move echoes the aftermath of Trump’s first win in 2016, when professors postponed exams and changed lesson plans to lighten students’ schedules.
Harvard tends to lean blue on the whole but pockets of conservative students maintain a presence on the campus.
The Free Press reported on Thursday (November 7) that Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy had anticipated the impact of a possible Trump’s victory on its leftist students and accordingly had set up a “Self-Care Suite” for them on Wednesday. The affected students would sit and play games there, do artwork, and have some milk with cookies.
The story added that Northwestern University and Princeton University took similar measures to counter the impact of the devastating results of Election Day on students who were left frustrated, scared, and uncertain. Some professors at Columbia University and Michigan State University (MSU) also canceled their classes. At the MSU, a professor canceled her classes because of her own emotional setback from Trump’s victory. Assistant Professor Shlagha Borah was cited from her email to her students:
“As a queer, immigrant woman of colour [sic], I cannot, in good conscience, go on about my day like everything is alright.”
The College Fix pointed to a more serious issue stemming from Trump’s victory that impacted some never-Trumper students – the tendency to threaten suicide. The story wrote that young people threatening to take their own lives in the wake of President Trump’s re-election has become a trend on social media. Alarmed by this trend, colleges and universities have activated counselors and crisis centers “to help struggling students process the results.”