CAPS Will Now Station Local Grandma Who Believes Therapy is 'Full of Shit' in Van Pelt Lobby
Graphic by Allison Kim / The Daily Pennsylvanian, Photos by Borna Saeednia / The Daily Pennsylvanian and from MaxPixel / CC0
November 5, 2018 at 1:59 pm
On Monday, University administrators announced that they would make big strides to fight mental illness on Penn’s campus, placing a licensed CAPS clinician in Huntsman Hall. Although salaried with tuition dollars primarily from the College of Arts and Sciences, the CAPS clinician will only be available to counsel Wharton students.
Responding to student pushback over the inequity of only providing on-site mental health counseling to students in one school, University administrators have now announced a similar plan to be implemented in Van Pelt.
Starting Nov. 6, CAPS will station a local grandma who believes therapy is "full of shit" in Van Pelt lobby. Unlike the program in Huntsman, non-College students will have equal access to the grandma hired for this position, Marsha Sanders, who managed to raise three kids on her own—without shedding a single tear—while her husband served in Vietnam.
That’s right, access to care from Penn’s Counseling and Psychological Services just got as easy for College students as it did for Wharton students.
Similar to the licensed mental health professional stationed in Huntsman who is prepared to give thoughtful tips to help Whartonites de-stress, Sanders will make sure to let all students entering Van Pelt know why therapy is a scam. She’ll break down why and how people of her generation could handle a little crippling stress and didn’t need to get fancy-shmancy diagnoses like "depression" to make it through the day.
"When I was your age, there was no such thing as anxiety. You buckled down, made dinner for your husband, popped out babies like you were supposed to, and got on with your life," said Sanders when asked what type of counseling she would provide to vulnerable students seeking help.
"This was a really necessary program for us to implement," said an anonymous source from the Office of the Provost. "It's important that students in the college know we care about them just as much as we care about our cherished Wharton Students."