Commons Campaign
COMM 250
27 April 2017
Zach Markon, Abby Bierle, Blake Otte, Trevor Gausman
Proposal and Rhetorical Situation
The
exigence of our campaign was to increase awareness of mental health resources
available to students on UNL’s campus, and work to reduce and counter negative
stigmas surrounding conversations about mental health.
Mental
illness and mental disorder diagnoses are more prevalent than ever, especially
among college students. While the University of Nebraska - Lincoln does offer
several resources to students to combat mental health issues, many students
fail to utilize those resources, either due to lack of awareness about the help
they have access to, or because of the negative stigmas surrounding mental
health. Between these two barriers, one can assume that mental health is not as
highly prioritized as it should be on the UNL campus. College is a an incredibly
stressful time for every student. Between classes, jobs, internships, clubs and
more, a jam-packed schedule doesn’t leave a lot of room for relaxation, and
mental health is often pushed aside for other obligations. Students suffering
from mental illness can become even more overwhelmed by their internal
struggle. It is important for students to be able to identify a mental health
problem and be able to seek help for it in a safe, comforting environment.
By
undergoing this campaign, we set out to combat the stigmas that people have in
regard to mental illness by spreading awareness about the mental health issues
people face on campus, as well as by collecting data from UNL students
regarding how satisfied they are with the way UNL handles student mental health
issues. We connected with the University Health Center and CAPS to find a way
to spread more information about the resources available to students, as well
as to reinforce the idea that mental health issues shouldn't be connected with
such negative stereotypes. When we talked with CAPS directly, they told us that
the biggest thing they needed from us was the spreading of information about
various mental health issues on campus as well as the CAPS program itself. Our
goal to make campus a safe and supportive environment for everyone is shared by
the CAPS program, and tackling the issues of awareness has been a step in the
right direction.
The
rhetorical situation we faced was college students who constantly have their
attention drawn from one place to another. We believe our campaign involved a
very important issue, and we needed to find a way to attain agency on a
rhetorical audience that has a wide array of other issues to worry about. The
only way to do this was to inject new information into their everyday life. We
chose to apply the informationist model of
communication, as the lack of awareness on campus is what we saw to be the
biggest issue standing in the way of progress. Luckily, the timing of our
project falls in sync with increased conversation about the importance of
mental health.
Explanation
Our
group explored multiple avenues in hopes of creating an effective rhetorical
campaign. In order to obtain more information on the current conversation
surrounding mental health on campus, we sent out an online survey regarding
mental health awareness and services. We also conducted this same survey with
hard copies (about 40 surveys) to give to students in person. With the online
surveys our audience could feel comfortable answering honestly while remaining
anonymous in their answers and experiences with mental health. In this way we
took away the real-name culture of mental health and gave the audience a sense
of patient confidentiality, as they would receive in CAPS treatment in the
event that they needed it. The hard copy versions of the surveys, on the other
hand, allowed us to talk to the students who didn’t mind not being anonymous.
This gave us more information through one-on-one discussions with some of the
survey takers, and allowed us to talk to students in a more informal way. This
made some students feel more comfortable and open to talking honestly about
mental health. All of the information gathered from these surveys we sent to
the health center for them to examine and use for future reference when coming
up with better ways to tackle mental health issues on campus.
Another
one of our biggest tasks was to create attractive posters (pictured below) that
helped break down the stigma of mental health and provided information about
the resources on campus. We placed them all throughout campus in hopes of
breaking into the public sphere with the use of identification, and we also got
permission from the health center to post them around the building. They agreed
that the posters were informative and helped to spread awareness about what
CAPS is and the services that it provides. We worked with CAPS in order to
create posters that were accurate and reflective of their values. This was a
direct implementation of the informationist
model, because we were quite simply delivering facts to our audience. We
included deliberative rhetoric in our posters in order to create a sense of
urgency in raising awareness of mental health on campus.
 |
| The three posters we created as part of our Commons Campaign. The posters were created in collaboration with the University Health Center and distributed around campus. |
Towards the end of our campaign, we decided to take advantage
of the growing “clicktivism” among college students after the “13 Reasons Why”
Netflix release, and asked them to take their newfound knowledge to social
media. This popular series about a young woman dying by suicide
sparked immense conversation about mental health, and that was obvious
on campus. After creating fact and information
sheets, we started to hand them out to students around campus. We handed out
posters at the student union and asked students to take a photo with it using
the hashtag #UNLCAPS to post on their social media.
That way, if someone
clicked on the hashtag, they could see there was a running conversation about
gaining awareness of mental health. We created a networked space for everyone
hoping to get involved with improving awareness and diminishing stigmas of
mental health issues.
 |
| We asked students to take pictures with the posters and post it on social media with #UNLCAPS as the caption. |
Evidence
By
conducting a survey, reaching out to students directly about how they feel the
university handles health problems, and by connecting with UNL Counseling and
Psychological Services, our group was able to provide CAPS with data that they
will be able to use in the future when they are creating new programs,
reworking old programs, or when they are spreading information about mental
health issues to students. Through our examination of the data, we discovered
that most people who took the survey found UNL to be lacking in providing
information and help with anxiety related issues. We sent this information to
the health center with hopes that they will create more specific programs for
anxiety, and with the hope that students will learn more about anxiety related
problems and get the help they need. Another thing the survey revealed was that
some people felt the counseling provided at UNL wasn't as effective as it could
be. Some felt disconnected with the counselors provided to them, and they felt
that their problems may not have been taken as seriously as they would have
liked. By passing this information along to CAPS, they might be able to use
this feedback to make improvements to how they present counselors to students,
or the counselors themselves may think of new ways to connect with students to
help them feel more validated and cared for when opening up about sensitive
topics.
Reflection
We
believe that the biggest success we had was in the survey, which allowed us to
help CAPS improve its on-campus awareness, and gave them information on what
students think should be improved upon for a better overall environment. We
found out the strengths, weaknesses and overall thoughts on the psychological services
available on campus, which could truly make a difference for future students in
need. We also created a conversation just out of the survey itself, as people
who may not have been aware of CAPS before taking the survey now knew there
were resources on campus. When talking to some of the students directly after
they had taken the (written) survey, many expressed that overall, they thought
UNL provided adequate information and services related to mental health, but
that there was also significant room for improvement. The survey allowed
students to voice where they thought that improvement was needed, on top of
also allowing them to express what they found beneficial about UNL’s resources
for mental health. This information can prove to be useful to CAPS when they
look at where to make improvements.
Another
beneficial aspect of the surveys is that we decided to conduct the survey
online, as well as give the survey out in person to get more one-on-one
reactions and responses to the questions and overall idea of mental health on
campus. The online survey allowed us to gather a large amount of data over a
relatively short amount of time, and gave us side-by-side comparisons of the
answers people gave to each question. This allowed us to see the most common
answers to each question, as well as allowing us to analyze the data in a more
efficient way. The surveys we gave out in person may have made people think
more consciously about their answers because we were able to answer any
questions they may have had about the survey, as well as answer any questions
unrelated to the survey but related to student mental health on campus. This
way of conducting the survey started many conversations after the surveys were
returned to us, often about the overall outlook students had about mental
health on campus and what else they thought UNL could be doing to help students
who suffer from mental health issues.
Another
thing we were able to use when putting together this campaign was the release
of the Netflix series “13 Reasons Why.” As soon as the show came out, we
decided to capitalize on our newfound kairos and start the #UNLCAPS hashtag.
The storytelling aspect of the show was much more emotionally effective than
any statistics we could have talked about. We found people were much more
willing to post on social media about mental illness after this show came out.
This was a great example of using timing as an important rhetorical strategy
for success. We believe this was actually one of the most important parts of our
campaign because it taught us to be aware of the conversation around us, as
well as what is popular enough among our audience (UNL students) to play a part
in our campaign. We used our cognitive surplus to continue adding to the
conversation, even if it’s just the discussion of a Netflix show.
Something
we overlooked would be that with most of our rhetorical audience receiving all
of their information online, we should have implemented more of a digital
presence to fully capture the use of clicktivism sooner. A simple page on
social media could have spread like wildfire after catching the eye of just one
person. With mental health being a growing issue in this country, most students
would not scroll past content about it on their own campus. With one person
stopping to read and share a page on the prevalence of mental health, it would
have spread to each of the hundreds of friends that follow them which in turn
leads to hundreds more. Just like that, we could have educated hundreds of
people on not only the prevalence of mental illness but the inaccurate stigmas
and help centers that come with it. If we had another chance, we definitely
would implement a digital and online campaign from the start, rather than just
waiting until we had a good opportunity.
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