Two remaining candidates: one currently holds interim position, other chief of mental health at CA State Prison, Sacramento

Following the controversial termination of UC Davis’ former Counseling Services Director, a group of staff and students comprising the official Recruitment Advisory Committee (RAC) has been actively involved in a months-long hiring process to fill the position.

Two applicants remain: Dr. Paul Kim, who currently serves in the role of interim counseling services director and has served as director of multicultural services for UC Davis’ Student Health and Counseling Services (SHCS), and Dr. Ruben Valencia, who is the current chief of mental health at California State Prison, Sacramento, the largest mental health program in the state of California with 200 mental health staff. Valencia is also a former UC Davis counselor and clinical director of the academic and staff assistance program.

Last academic year, counseling services worked with over 5,100 unique students — the first time the university broke the 5,000 mark in an academic year, according to Kim.

“Increase in utilization is absolutely due to more demand and more acuity,” he said. “[It] may also be due to the work we do around stigma reduction and having multiple entry points.”

At CSP Sacramento, there are over 15,000 mental health appointments every month, according to Valencia. He said his primary concerns lie both with quantity and quality — ensuring demand is met and the care provided is the best it can be.

In their respective public forums open to community members, both Kim and Valencia spoke about the necessity of improving student knowledge of existing resources, supporting staff, maximizing resources before asking for additional support and increasing involvement with students.

Sarah Hahn’s termination

Last year, the university’s termination of former Counseling Services Director Sarah Hahn drew campuswide attention. Hahn maintains that her termination was retaliation for concerns she had raised about whether UC Davis had appropriately allocated student fees meant specifically for the hiring of an additional 12 counselors.

The planned hiring efforts were part of an ongoing systemwide mental health initiative which would bring the university in line with nationally recommended staff-to-student ratios. An investigation published in The California Aggie last year revealed a portion of these funds had been misallocated.

During his public forum, Kim said that in addition to hiring a new clinical director, a sports psychologist and a postdoc, the university is currently in the process of filling three new counselor positions. The hires will be on a 10-month, furloughed basis, but the positions are permanent.

“It’s important we get fully staffed,” Kim said.

As part of her official settlement agreement with the university, Hahn agreed to resign from her position in exchange for a severance pay of $12,394.83, according to an official copy of the agreement obtained by The California Aggie via a California Public Records Act request.

Following her termination, the Facebook page “Defend Student Allies: Save Sarah Hahn” received support from over 600 students.

According to fourth-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major Shradha Shah, a current co-chair of the Student Mental Health Coalition and one of three student members on the RAC, the backlash resulting from Hahn’s termination provided an incentive for SHCS “to be more transparent in this process and to increase student involvement.”

“The three of us had an equal voice and vote as the other members of RAC who were faculty/staff, and we could freely share our experiences through the process as long as we up-kept candidate privacy,” Shah said via email. “I do believe this increase of involvement and transparency was due to the uproar of Sara Hahn’s upsetting termination, and I hope in the future this effort will be continually made by administration.”

Hiring Process

During the hiring process, which has taken several months, members of the RAC narrowed down the pool of candidates to just a handful of individuals who were then interviewed, Shah said.

The RAC is composed of individuals representing various groups on campus, including the “Counseling Center, Student Health, Student Mental Health Coalition, Student Disability Center, Student Support and Judicial Affairs, Office of Educational Opportunity and Enrichment Services and the Community Resource and Retention Center,” according to Jennifer Billeci, the director of the Student Disability Center.
After narrowing down the pool of applicants, and after one applicant dropped out, only Kim and Valencia remained. The RAC asked both questions about accessibility, budget allocation and representing marginalized communities, Shah explained.

Both Kim and Valencia had their own, separate public forums on Jan. 17 and Jan. 22, respectively. An hour-and-a-half was also set aside for the applicants to meet with students at a student luncheon, and interview sessions were scheduled specifically for Kim and Valencia to meet with counseling services staff. Some of these staff members served on the RAC.

Billeci said the public forum was advertised via Student Affairs and Undergraduate Education, and Shah said both she and another student member of the RAC used their Student Mental Health Coalition platform to “involve and educate as many students as possible” via the group’s monthly newsletter and talking about the hiring at meetings and through presentations.

Despite these efforts, few students were present at both Kim and Valencia’s public forums. The livestream of the forums was not made publicly available and was accessible only to those who explicitly requested access.

Improving access to services

At their respective public forums, both Valencia and Kim responded to the same presentation topic: what they would do to improve access — one of the most pressing issues for university counseling services — at every level, both by maximizing existing resources and advocating for additional resources.

Improving access to services is one of the most critical on campus issues identified by the chancellor’s Mental Health Task Force.

Following the publication of a multi-part Aggie investigation and a particularly contentious Mental Health Town Hall, May convened a special task force to assess mental health needs on campus. In its report sent to the chancellor, the task force — composed of administrators, faculty and students — recommended the university focus on improving access to services, increasing its suicide prevention efforts, improving transparency and expanding student involvement in mental health-related conversations

Notably, not a single UC Davis clinician sat on the task force. Furthermore, according to the official task force report’s summary of the individuals interviewed, it appears no input from UC Davis clinicians was taken into consideration.

During his presentation, Valencia said he has been following what’s been happening at UC Davis during his time at CSP Sacramento by reading The California Aggie reports, watching the Mental Health Town Hall live-stream and reading through the task force’s recommendations report, which he frequently referenced.

“Pro-tip for any people who might be wondering what to do as a good employee: if your boss’ boss’ boss ever convenes a task force and puts your primary stakeholders — the students — on it to come up with recommendations, you should probably pay attention,” Valencia said. “And you should probably try to implement those recommendations wherever you can.”

Shah, who sat on the task force, said the group found that “a large percentage of students did not have the basic understanding of where to access mental health care on campus.”

“To me, this is a failure on SHCS’ part,” she said via email. “Students should be educated from the moment they walk onto this campus where they can access help in times of distress, what services their tuition pays for, and how important their mental health is during their time here. [And] with such a diverse student population our staff should reflect this same diversity and have the proper skillset to serve the different marginalized, underserved, and underrepresented populations of our campus.”

Both Valencia and Kim say they are committed to improving the student population’s ability to navigate on campus resources more comfortably.
Currently, a singular, standardized guide with all of the mental health resources both on and off campus is in production, Kim said. Looking through all of the resources available to students, however, Valencia said he became overwhelmed.

Valencia also spoke about his personal passion for hiring a staff of culturally-diverse counselors. In his position at CSP Sacramento, he saw a critical need for more Spanish-speaking counselors, and the prison now has the most Spanish-speaking clinicians the prison has had in recent years. He also spoke about overseeing specialized services for marginalized groups like the prison’s transgender population.

During the question-and-answer portion of his forum, a member of the audience asked Valencia about his response to the insufficient number of community referrals available and the conception of “treat ‘em and street ‘em,” the idea that students have a limited number of counseling appointments.

“We need to stay true to our mission,” he said, adding counseling services does not have the ability to influence what happens in the community. “[We] must put boundaries on what we can do.”

And Kim, at his forum, when asked about what he feels is the campus’ responsibility to provide care to students with the most intensive needs, said it is “to help a student get the appropriate care for whatever they’re presenting you with.”

“I don’t think that means that you’re always in a position to provide that care,” he said. “If someone would benefit from ongoing therapy […] unfortunately given the resources that we have, that’s not something we can do. That being said, I do think we have a responsibility to those students. And that’s when we’d use the full range of what we have to offer.”

Final decision

A final decision about the position will be made by the hiring managers who will take input from the UC Davis community, students, counseling services and the RAC into consideration.

“Next steps for the RAC include collecting and organizing community comment and feedback, conducting a final RAC meeting to discuss our impressions of each candidate, and forwarding our recommendations to hiring manager,” Billeci said via email. “Once we turn over our findings to the hiring manager(s), the process usually takes just a few more weeks.”

When a final decision is made, Shah hopes the new counseling services director stands by students to advocate for their needs while also taking full advantage of existing resources.

“There are so many missed opportunities to outreach to students and create more accessibility, from working closer with community providers, to creating peer counseling programs, or simply even educating students at freshmen orientation,” she said. “I’m looking for a new counseling director who will take the initiative to create accessibility in as many places and ways as possible.”

Written by: Hannah Holzer — campus@theaggie.org

LGBTQIA members of University Covenant Church, Catalyst speak about being in these groups

“Five years. I spent five years at University Covenant Church involved on both staff and volunteer levels building relationships, investing in youth, and being a Guinea pig for the staff to figure out how to approach the LGBT community […] In reflection, I wonder if it was all a waste of time.”

These are the opening words of a blog post by Jordon Friend, a former UC Davis student and former member of University Covenant Church (UCC) in Davis.

Friend and two other individuals — both members of the LGBTQIA community — spoke to The California Aggie about their previous and current experiences being out and involved with UCC and Catalyst, a Christian group on campus related to UCC.

UCC’s Lead Pastor John Fanous said that sexual orientation has never been an issue within the UCC, saying that the church doesn’t “really distinguish on sexual orientation,” and that it is “not a factor at all.”

Although UCC leaders have said they want to provide a fully accepting space where LGBTQIA-identifying individuals feel welcome, enforced restrictions barring LGBTQIA individuals access to leadership roles as well as celibacy requirements have affected both Friend and others.

Difference in treatment at UCC

Friend’s account of how he was treated by the leadership of the church as someone who didn’t fit into the heterosexual norm is extensively detailed in his public online post. He alleges he was forced to go through obstacles that a straight member of the church would never have to.

“The elder team and leaders at UCC would like to think the difference in treatment doesn’t really exist,” Friend said, adding, however, that in order for him to be deemed suitable for a staff position he was subject to a four-month process and extensive conversations. “No one who volunteers at my level ever needed a four month process to come to the conclusion that I was, indeed, fit to be on staff.”

Friend said he was also forced to retell his story numerous times — an emotional ordeal for him — “hoping to ensue some sort of empathy.”

Requirements imposed on him by UCC leadership included pursuing a life of celibacy and refraining from dating.

“They also had me agree to check in and give results on how their ‘gay leader’ experiment was going,” he wrote in his post. “Then they said they still weren’t sure if they trusted me. After sticking around for so many years, after serving with all my heart, after being completely vulnerable. They said to build trust I needed to take down my blogs. To make it real official, I signed a contract.”

UCC Lead Pastor John Fanous said that all leaders sign an agreement acknowledging a set of expectations, and denied Friend’s claim that his contract was altered due to his sexuality.

“I don’t think he signed anything that was different than any other leaders,” Fanous said. “That is so against anything we believe. I don’t think that happened.”

Friend provided The California Aggie with an email containing details about a meeting where he and UCC leadership discussed additional clauses to the standard contracts, signed in April of 2017.

The email discussed a volunteer leadership proposal for Friend. In this position, he was subjected to mandatory check-ins to an individual named “Kyle.” Additional clauses pertaining to Friend included: “the volunteer agrees to not undermine the Covenant position on human sexuality. The volunteer signs the Covenant leadership agreements. The volunteer remains accountable to Kyle while in this role.”

An additional clause shows the apparent motivation behind UCC agreeing to have Friend as a leader: “Kyle shares his learning in the coming year on LGBTQ care strategies with the ET so that we can all learn more about how to best uphold truth and love.”

Celibacy requirements at Catalyst

The UCC’s reach extends beyond its building on Mace Boulevard. It has a presence on the UC Davis campus via Catalyst, an Evangelical Christian group associated with the church.

Andy Lee, a fourth-year wildlife, fish and conservation biology major and a former member of Catalyst leadership, recognized a strong connection between the two organizations, stating “whatever UCC believes, Catalyst also has to operate on.”

“Catalyst is definitely more vocal with loving people, but the stance is the same,” Lee said. “I think Catalyst tries to love queer folks, but UCC’s stance is that same sex love is not ordained by God. UCC’s love is a little conditioned. A lot of times, they love you but they don’t celebrate you wholly.”

Lee stopped his involvement with Catalyst at the beginning of this school year due to a combination of family and personal issues along with a sense that he did not feel “loved, accepted and celebrated” by the leadership at Catalyst, especially after the leadership suggested that he should find another church in their emails to each other.

Like Friend, Lee also said that there were specific expectations enforced for members of leadership at UCC and Catalyst who are also members of the LGBTQIA community as well as restrictions on access to these leadership roles for these individuals in the first place. For example, if Lee had wanted access to a high-ranking role, he’d have to remain celibate.

“They have different levels of what you can do as a queer person,” Lee said. “For example, if you were running the slides in the background, they don’t care. You’re not seen. [But] I was a worship leader, I’m kind of up front every other week, so they cared if I was seeing someone. I was able to lead worship, but technically I wasn’t able to pray or preach. If you want to lead or preach or pray at a higher level, as Jordon mentioned, you had to say you would be celibate.”

After Friend’s blog post was publicly posted, Lee sent a letter to UCC’s head pastor and three leaders of Catalyst. He subsequently received a response back which, he said, “didn’t make me feel welcome.”

In the email Lee sent, which was obtained by The California Aggie, he described elements of his experience that had made him feel not fully welcome. Specifically, he said he promised to not make his dating life public, “even though that wasn’t the case for straight couples.”

“I have worked very hard to make Catalyst an inclusive space for queer people during my two years in leadership,” Lee wrote. “It hurt me that I was held to a different standard at the time, but I thought it was worthwhile if it could help gay people in the future of Catalyst. Therefore, this in no way [is] attacking Catalyst or its effort to support queer people. I understand the struggles we have gone through together.”

Lee also mentioned the struggles he faced applying to become a member of Catalyst leadership.

“I was hurt when I applied to be a leader at the end of freshmen year and again sophomore year,” Lee wrote. “I was loved by the community of Catalyst as a whole, but to serve as a leader I was held to different expectations and I had to hide myself. I felt mislead. The community was so loving, and the environment was accepting, however, leadership was not. I felt that the whole topic –– our lives –– was sugar coated and brushed over.”

During his time involved with Catalyst, Lee’s primary goal was to inspire positive change and acceptance of queer people. He said he never saw these goals become a reality.

“Jordon [Friend] put a lot of intentional effort to direct people towards UCC and Catalyst, me included,” Lee wrote. “He genuinely convinced me that it was worthwhile to serve at a church that was not affirming […] I felt that I was called to serve on leadership to fight for queer rights. However, in my time while serving, nothing came to fruition. From my understanding, queer people still felt uncomfortable, no matter what we did or what I did.”

After being made aware that this article about their group was in the works, Catalyst leadership attempted to dissuade individuals from sharing any negative criticism or sentiments.

“Support Staff has built enough trust with each one of you that you will do your absolute best to not spread lies, shut down gossip if you hear it, and only share positive opinions/comments with other people,” a private Facebook post, which was obtained by The California Aggie and authored by Julia Hall, one of Catalyst’s student leaders, stated.

Hall and the Catalyst leadership team clarified the purpose of this post to The Aggie, stating via email that “there is no underlying negative connotation about the queer community in the post.”

“We were solely preparing our leadership team for the possibility that there would be an article written about us, and encouraging them to stay positive if they heard any kind of negativity,” she said. “We received information of comments that others had shared with us during the same time you originally reached out to us that clearly led us to believe the article would not represent us in a positive light.”

“It’s okay to be gay, but you can’t act on it”

Nick Bua, an acquaintance of Friend’s and someone currently attending UCC, sees both sides of this story.

“They’re really trying to be a safe place to the best of their abilities, based on what they know,” Bua said. “The church was extremely silent in [Friend]’s time, so I understand how he feels. Now, they’re at least trying to be mindful.”

According to Bua, there are still “restrictions” today in the roles that people in same-sex relationships can have at UCC.

“[UCC is] restricting teaching roles and upper leadership,” Bua said. “[Friend] couldn’t [be in that role] since he is in a same sex relationship. In my opinion, there shouldn’t be a cut off. Like, ‘Yeah, you’re safe here in this church, but once you get comfortable there’s restrictions.’”

Bua described a three-pronged model for LGBTQIA involvement and theology in churches.

“Side X is historically pray the gay away and seeing being gay as a sin,” Bua said. “Side A is the affirming side: you can be gay and have a same sex marriage, and God will still love you. For Side B, being gay is not a sin. You’re born that way and you can’t control it. It’s the middle. It’s okay to be gay, but you can’t act on it. You can’t have a same sex marriage. They believe in celibacy and heterosexual marriages.”

Despite the restrictions inherent in the upholding of the “Side B” model, Bua saw a positive change when the church’s leadership decided to take a stance and side with this point of view.

“In the past year or so, UCC chose Side B,” Bua said. “They’re trying to be less silent on the issue. It’s like a slow moving vehicle. It’s frustrating, but that’s how any big things are. In the last few months, they have actually said words like ‘gay’ out in the open.”

Similarly, Fanous described UCC as somewhere in the middle of the theological path.

“We tend to have conservative churches who have no [queer] space, or liberal churches with very different theologies,” Fanous said. “I’d like to think we bridge that gap and offer something different. We’re excited to provide that queer space that historically has not been there.”

Bua’s frustration extends to theology — specifically, what fits into the church’s version and what doesn’t.

“It’s been hard [after coming out], but they’ve been learning what to say and what not to say,” Bua said. “They’re pretty receptive. The only thing is the very obvious barrier of the theology. They’re open to it, but they really want to make sure the theology is consistent. There aren’t theology checks at the door for other issues. They watch [sexuality] a lot more closely.”

Despite Bua and Fanous’ optimism and hope that UCC will strengthen its ties and support of the LGBTQIA community, Friend is still hurting from his experiences.

“Finding a church community has been so hard,” Friend said. “I want so badly to find somewhere that holds true to the things I loved about UCC, but that’s been difficult. Straight folks have it a little easier when it comes to Christianity: they search for a church that has the type of music they want, preaching style and community involvement. I have to first find a church where I can feel comfortable holding my boyfriends hand during service, then I can consider other things.”

Written by: Deana Medina — campus@theaggie.org