Offer some training to faculty so they can better recognize when a student needs more help and can help direct them to that? Yes, absolutely. But that should be it. The person responsible for evaluating student academic performance should not also be their counselor. PERIOD. https://twitter.com/insidehighered/status/1380355286788141062

And also: what exactly is higher ed doing to deal with the absolutely soul crushing compassion fatigue that faculty are experiencing even without being expected to do this? And how many unis offer free secondary trauma counseling for faculty?

When I first started teaching, I had my students keep a "learning journal." Each week they were to write about one thing they'd learned in class that they could relate directly to or see happening in their non-academic life. I discontinued that activity the next year. Why?

Because many female students wrote to me that they had been raped. Some described the assault in detail. I spent that first year coordinating care for multiple students who had been raped.

These sexual assaults had no occurred on campus (we're not a residence college), so I would advise these women to go the police, I would get them to call the local sexual assault counseling center for free counseling, and I worried about them constantly.

They'd written about their experiences because they trusted me, and I cherished that. However, this was not my job (and I don't mean that in a pithy sense), and I did not have adequate support or training at the time to be in this position.

Furthermore, I struggled with how to fulfill the actual duties of my job (evaluating their grasp of psychological concepts) while having been thrust into the role of their emotional support person. It was inappropriate and potentially harmful for all involved.

If you want to make sure students have the psychological support they need, expand counseling services on ALL campuses. Make them accessible at NO CHARGE.

Yes, provide us with the training needed to recognize when intervention may be required (and most probably can already easily do that). But don't put faculty into unethical and untrained dual roles. The emotional weight of evaluating student performance is heavy enough by itself.