Students demand more after receiving school-sponsored mental health day

After being given a day off from classes, Point Park University (PPU) students are demanding more.

PPU’s student-run newspaper, The Globe, published an op-ed titled “We deserve more than one mental health day” one day after the school implemented a campus-wide day off called Pioneer Pause. 

The op-ed argued that the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania university should be doing more to allow students to take time off from school when a mental health break is needed. 

[RELATED: New school tradition cancels classes for mental health]

“While [Pioneer Pause] is for sure a step in the right direction, we need more than one mental health day a semester, as our attendance policy is not flexible,” the op-ed claimed.  

“Having one day without classes on a random Tuesday in October is simply not enough to get us through until Thanksgiving Break and the semester in general,” it continued.

Pioneer Pause was held on Oct. 25 and invited students to engage in “wellness activities” in place of attending class.

Not all students are on board with university-sponsored days off of class, however.

Tyler Hillard, a PPU student, said his fellow classmates are “going to try to take it too far.”

“Once [you] give them an inch they try to get a foot,” Hillard told Campus Reform. “This is what they are doing in trying to get more and more and cannot appreciate what we were given.”

[RELATED: Princeton should ‘budget some free time for us,’ Ivy League student argues]

Pioneer Pause is slated to be a yearly tradition.

“Offering a day for students to decompress, have fun, and get access to information and speakers who can help them develop ways to cope is a step toward dealing with that stress,” PPU’s Managing Director of University Marketing and Public Relations Louis Corsaro previously told Campus Reform. 

Campus Reform reached out to Point Park University and The Globe for comment. This article will be updated accordingly. 

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