Professional Documents
Culture Documents
April 2015
Summary
Students who use Counseling
and Psychological Services (CPS)
and Furman Counseling Center
have a variety of experiences, and
the data collected by our survey
shows that these experiences
vary based upon the groups
with which these students
identify. In some cases, students
expectations were exceeded in
the way that CPS dealt with a
marginalized identity However,
CPS still has many areas in which
it needs to improve. Of particular
concern is the care of students
who identify as people of color
and non-straight students, as
these two groups as these two
groups often had very strongly
negative experiences.
Methods
Its hard to relate to
the staff because they
are not Indigenous.
However, Im
challenging
myself and learning to
adapt. Even though I
would like someone
who has experience
with working with
Indigenous students, I
am managing.
- Gay Indigenous
respondent on his
experiences at CPS
Analysis by School
We found a marginally significant effect that those who are in CC
(as opposed to SEAS, Barnard, GS, and graduate schools) have the lowest
satisfaction.
I didnt have a
phone-call in,
rather I stopped
by during the
open-door hours
of one of the
counselors who
then scheduled
an appointment
for me with a
counselor. She was
very responsive
and helpful during
the open-door
hours, and really
listened to my
problems intently
enough to refer me
to a counselor who
had a specialty in
counseling gay
students.
- Gay white
respondent on his
experiences at CPS
Race
Due to low sample size, results were
categorized as students of color
and students not of color. The term
students of color encompassed
students who self-identified as
Black/African-American/African,
Latin@/Hispanic/Chican@, AsianAmerican/Asian/South
Asian,
Native/First
Nations,
Arab/
Middle Eastern, and multiracial/
mixed-race. (Terms have been
lifted directly from the students
responses.) Students of color
had a lowered expectation for
how comfortable they would feel
speaking at either CPS or Furman,
but only on the basis of racial
categories, and felt roughly the
same as students not identifying of
color for all of the other categories.
For the satisfaction or comfortability
after having visited CPS, students
of color feel less comfortable
discussing all topics (gender, race,
sexuality, etc.) but the effect is
particularly pronounced and only
Gender
Due to the variety of responses
and the very small number of
respondents identifying as noncisgender, analysis was limited
to cisgender men, cisgender
women, and transgender people (a
category including trans men, trans
women, and genderqueer/nonbinary people). For expectations
of comfort levels, trans students
felt lower on all parameters.
Something noteworthy is that trans
students felt the lowest comfort
for discussing religious identities.
Between cisgender men and
women, cisgender women were
slightly lower. As for the students
that have attended, satisfaction
is slightly lower for women. This
sample only has 6 trans students,
which makes analysis quite difficult;
however, the average of those six
Sexual Orientation
There were similar issues in the analysis of data on the
effect of sexual orientation to those seen for gender.
The respondents were therefore categorized into
straight and gay/lesbian/bisexual/queer/etc. to allow
for statistical analysis.
Students who have not utilized any of the health
services offices and did not identify as straight had
significantly lower expectations, especially in their
expectations of orientation and gender. Students who
did not identify as straight and have attended CPS have
felt a lower satisfaction than heterosexual students on
all parameters, and particularly so on the parameter of
sexual orientation.
Religious Identity
Categorization of respondents based upon religion did
not yield statistically significant results. Many students
identified with multiple religious categorizations or
did not identify any religious identity. Anecdotally,
students who identified as Muslims felt as if their
CPS therapists made presumptions about [their]
upbringing when the therapist discovered their
religious identity. A desire for at least one Muslim
counselor on staff was expressed by a Muslim man of
color: As a Muslim, I fear that CPS wont be able to give
me the specialized counseling I need. I need someone
to understand my faith and any problems that may
arise from it.
Intersecting Identities
As the identities compounded, we saw meaningful
and significant effects. Each identity added lowers the
score for some category of satisfaction (usually the one
related to that identity) and lowers the satisfaction in
a small way for the overall score. As each identity is
added, the overall satisfaction score continually gets
lower -- indicating that when each additional identity
(and specifically marginalized identities in the case of
this particular analysis) is taken into account, the score
for overall satisfaction with CPS decreased, indicating
that students on average feel worse as they have more
intersecting marginalized identities.