Counseling & Psychological Services

We take the confidentiality of our work here quite seriously. Your therapist won’t share what you talk about with your parents, deans, Title IX, or anyone else.

Coming here is your own free and private choice. Except in rare circumstances, usually having to do with life-threatening circumstances, any information about you seeking services here will also be up to you. We consider the fact of your coming here to be your own business. For instance, we are willing to see or talk to your parents, but we would only talk with them if you wanted us to do so or in those rare circumstances having usually to do with life-threat.

We do not get involved in administrative decisions about students that we are seeing in counseling except in situations discussed ahead of time with the student. The benefit for you in this policy is that you can trust that what you say will be respected as private information. By the same token, however, you should not expect us to intervene in matters such as course extensions and room changes.

There is no record anywhere else of your visit here, and our records are destroyed, in accordance with Pennsylvania law, seven years after graduation. Unfortunately, there are still some agencies and institutions (i.e., Peace Corps, some professional licensing boards) that ask on their application forms whether you have been in counseling or psychotherapy. We consider it your right to keep that information from them. We respond to all routine inquiries for information with a polite letter that says that we do not release that information about students.