In fall 2022, a Harvard freshman was taken to McLean Hospital in Belmont for expressing thoughts of suicide. The psychiatric ward had run out of beds, she remembered, so she spent almost two months in the emergency room, trying to convince Harvard officials to let her back on campus.
“Mental hospitals aren’t necessarily the best places to be,” the student, who is now listed as “Student B” in legal filings, told The Crimson. “You’re calling your freshman proctor and you’re calling your dean, and you’re saying, ‘What can I do to get back on campus? I want to take my finals. I want to see my friends again.’”
After she was hospitalized, her resident dean informed Student B that she was not allowed to return to campus — placed on “involuntary medical leave,” according to her hospital discharge summary. Without approval to return from the Harvard College Administrative Board, which handles disciplinary cases, she was unable to attend classes or pack her belongings.
Harvard cleared her the day after the spring semester began, after she agreed to regular therapy in a University treatment contract, granted the College’s Counseling and Mental Health Services access to her medical records, and consented to immediate psychological evaluation whenever required by College administrators. Student B is now one of five anonymous students suing the University as part of Students 4 Mental Health Justice, a student advocacy group alleging Harvard’s mental health policies break federal law.
“Harvard responds to disability-related behavior with exclusion, blame, and draconian measures,” they wrote in the complaint. “Harvard’s policies, practices, and procedures illegally discriminate against students with mental health disabilities and must be ceased immediately.”
S4MHJ filed its lawsuit in May, alleging that Harvard violates the American with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Massachusetts Equal Rights Act. After Harvard asked a judge to dismiss the complaint in October, the group submitted a revised suit with newly detailed allegations.
The lawsuit raises serious questions about Harvard’s enforcement of involuntary leave policies and could force the University to change them, legal experts said, pointing to settlements at other Ivy League schools where similar policies were challenged in court.
S4MHJ did not demand any monetary compensation — only that a judge declare the policies illegal and force Harvard to make changes.
“For us, justice isn’t about money,” Student B wrote in a statement to The Crimson.“It’s about making sure students in our position are treated more fairly in the future.”
‘Your School Doesn’t Want You Back’
Harvard’s mental health policies have long been the subject of controversy, but legal experts say the S4MHJ case could seriously challenge Harvard’s involuntary leave policies and the treatment contracts students are required to sign before returning.
Of the five anonymous students whose stories are detailed in the complaint, four were banned from stepping foot on Harvard property, even if escorted by a parent, after they were hospitalized for mental illness and placed on medical leave.
The group alleges this rule, outlined in the Harvard College Student Handbook, amounts to discrimination against students with mental health disabilities in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability.
“They become relegated to a status that is even more restricted than members of the general public — about whom Harvard knows nothing — who are generally free to enter Harvard’s campus,” S4MHJ’s lawyers wrote in the complaint.
Ohio State University law professor Ruth Colker ’78, a disability law expert, said universities can only legally justify campus bans under the ADA if they prove that individual students posed a risk to other students.
“Those are really the only facts that I can imagine that would in some way justify a university saying, ‘You can’t come back on campus, you can’t enroll in classes, you need to make a demonstration that you are no longer a risk to the self, safety, and health of others,’” she said. “But there’s nothing in this complaint to suggest that that argument has ever been made. It looks like these were students who had suicidal ideations.”
A spokesperson for the University did not respond to a request for comment on how officials determine whether to bar students on leave from accessing campus.
According to a former College administrator, Harvard considers whether the presence of the student with mental illness would place undue strain on their friends and classmates when deciding whether to restrict their access to school grounds.
Former Dean of University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law Laura F. Rothstein said the key legal question is whether Harvard’s policy “treats a student adversely based on treatment and diagnosis, rather than behavior and conduct.”
“What I would expect the judge in the case will try to sort out is what was really the basis,” Rothstein said. “Was this based on the student’s mental health status, or was it based on conduct?”
Harvard has placed students on involuntary leave and banned students from setting foot on campus after hospitalizations for mental illness. By Hugo C. Chiasson
Doctors for Student E — another anonymous student plaintiff in the case — extended his stay in the McLean psychiatric ward beyond what they believed was medically necessary, they told him, because the student was unable to return to campus, according to the complaint.
While Student E and his doctor were successful in convincing Harvard officials to allow him to return five days before Harvard’s initial demand, he said that he had felt pressured to remain confined in the mental hospital.
“It was a really strange feeling being a 19-year-old and having a doctor, two social workers, and a nurse being like, ‘Yeah, you don’t have to be here, but we’re keeping you here because we don’t want you to be homeless, and your school doesn’t want you back on campus, even though you’re not a risk to yourself or others,’” Student E said in an interview with The Crimson.
New York Law School professor Heather E. Cucolo said the policies, which appear to similarly restrict the five students named in the complaint, constitute “a blanket discrimination policy.”
“A direct threat analysis,” she said, “just does not apply, particularly if there have been medical professionals who have mandated that these individuals are no longer a danger to self or others, and that they should not be denied equal access.”
While universities are allowed to create treatment plans individualized for specific students, multiple experts said the consistent use of blanket campus restrictions constitutes in practice a policy far less tailored than advertised.
“What seems to be clear is they’re not undertaking the kind of individualized analysis that’s required,” University of Michigan law professor Samuel R. Bagenstos said.
Similar mental health lawsuits at Princeton University and Yale University in 2014 and 2022, respectively, resulted in settlements. As part of their agreement, Yale changed its leave of absence policy to grant students on leave the right to enter campus spaces like libraries and access university resources such as the career advice office. The university also relaxed its re-enrollment requirements.
Bagenstos said that because S4MHJ is bringing a similar suit, they have “a very strong likelihood of success.”
To return to campus, the plaintiffs had to sign extensive treatment contracts granting Harvard access to their medical records, mandating therapy and medication use, requiring that they limit alcohol intake, and demanding that they “immediately” comply with psychological evaluation whenever required by Harvard administrators. S4MHJ alleges the contracts violate students’ privacy rights and are exclusively imposed upon students with mental health disabilities.
The Student Handbook’s involuntary leave of absence policy applies broadly to “medical circumstances” and does not describe separate criteria for mental health conditions. But the plaintiffs argue that Harvard does not hold students without mental illnesses to the same standards.
“In practice, these policies are only applied to students who are hospitalized or visit the emergency room for symptoms of mental health disabilities, and not to students who are hospitalized or visit the emergency room for other reasons, such as a broken arm,” they write in the complaint.
S4MHJ also argues that Harvard makes it difficult for students to return to their education once they have been put on leave, calling the College’s policies “invasive” and “burdensome.”
Harvard spokespeople did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the allegations in the complaint. But the Handbook describes the requested information as “limited” and “on a need-to-know basis.”
According to the Handbook, students on medical leave must petition the Administrative Board for their return, typically by providing “evidence of productivity,” which includes a written statement and letters of recommendation. Student A — another anonymous plaintiff in the case — alleges that she had to provide proof of six months of continuous, full-time work in order to re-enroll.
Students on medical leaves of absence “ordinarily will be required to consult with Harvard University Health Services (and to grant permission to Harvard University Health Services to obtain their relevant treatment records and communicate with their treatment providers),” according to the Handbook.
The Handbook notes more than 40 pages later that “any student may, of course, refuse to allow consultation between the student’s clinician(s) and Harvard College, but such a refusal will not prevent Harvard College from making a decision regarding a student’s return to residence or continued enrollment.”
The policies do not explicitly say whether a student who does not grant administrators access to their medical records would be allowed to return to the University.
Harvard University Health Services is located in the Smith Campus Center. By Angela Dela Cruz
Even after Harvard lifted her involuntary leave and allowed her to re-enroll, Student B said her treatment contract conditions made her “really fear for my education.”
“I don’t get to have the same right to privacy of my information as other students,” she said. “I don’t get to walk around campus with complete confidence that the resident dean couldn’t knock on my door tomorrow and tell me that I need to be psychologically evaluated.”
The Handbook explains that the Ad Board only requires treatment contracts after HUHS conducts an “individualized assessment” of a student’s needs. But S4MHJ’s complaint alleges that many of its members’ contracts contained nearly identical conditions.
“These contracts, which give Harvard the right to surveil students’ private medical decisions and access private medical information in order to return to enrollment and campus, are applied routinely to students with a wide range of mental health conditions and are not tailored or individualized to the students’ care needs,” the lawyers wrote.
Student E, who is now a senior, said he had to sign four almost identical treatment contracts since sophomore year. He said the contracts made him feel like “a checkbox” in the eyes of the University.
“If I was to take a gap, for example, for five years and come back to Harvard, I would still be on the exact same treatment contract,” he said. “Harvard’s approach is not just to isolate and stigmatize the person once they try to get the help that they need. It’s also to continue to isolate and stigmatize them, regardless of any type of growth.”
“This is not really about verifying if a student is okay or not,” he added. “It’s instead about controlling a student and protecting the institution’s reputation and/or bottom line.”
Student E said he hopes the group’s lawsuit will force Harvard to adopt a more tailored approach to supporting students with mental illnesses that would not deter students from seeking treatment.
“There was always this culture at Harvard that basically said it was okay to be depressed, but only to the extent that it’s funny,” he added. “As soon as it becomes serious, you are a liability, and Harvard will kick you out.”
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If you or someone you know needs help at Harvard, you can contact Counseling and Mental Health Services at (617) 495-2042 or the Harvard University Police Department at (617) 495-1212. Several peer counseling groups offer confidential peer conversations; learn more here.
You can contact a University Chaplain to speak one-on-one at [email protected] or here.
You can also call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
—Staff writer Wyeth Renwick can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @wzrenwick.