“We Just Can’t Have You Here”
As a physician, and former member of a college staff, I suspect Ms Williams will look back on this bit of writing with a twinge.<p>She had to "listen to the rattling gasping sound coming from the person two beds down" and  to "a schizophrenic person declare, every hour or so, that he had soiled himself". When she is interning for The Congressman, in a policy debate about primary care or mental health, she will value the opportunity to have borne witness to their sufferings.<p>She was asked to recite the presidents in reverse order? You mean the psychiatrist was adapt enough to develop a intellectually appropriate variation on the mini-mental status exam? That sounds like first rate care to me.<p>The men with guns have guns because they're representatives of the state. Yes, ultimately, they exercise the state's monopoly on violence. Which is mostly incidental. We can't arrange special neutered cops for the sensibilities of Ms Williams, and frankly, the psych ward of a downtown hospital is one of the more volatile places in the world. Same for the room/cell, etc, etc. The physical confines are a function of what's safe based on the lowest common denominator in the population: the 6'7" 230 lb schizoaffective linebacker (have met those patients ... do not care to meet again).<p>Her central thesis, that Yale is focused on image, frankly doesn't sound like anything the university is really worried about. No rational administrator would allow image to enter their minds. If anything, that would be antithetical to the image argument. These are people who live their lives by the mantra that they should be prepared for anything they say to be published on the front page of the New York Times. And they're pretty savvy. They know that doing the best for this student, no matter what the blow back, is ultimately the right thing to do. Take care of the patient and the image issue will take care of itself.