New Alumni Mental Health Group Seeks ‘To Make Princeton Students Feel Less Alone’

When Tiffanie Cheng Wu ’24 celebrated Reunions on campus, it was the first time since her first few days as an undergraduate that she felt “at ease, truly, at Princeton.” The pressure that often comes along with being a Princeton student had melted away.

As a former mental health committee co-chair for the Undergraduate Student Government (USG), Wu was inspired after Reunions 2025 to reach out to other alumni to “continue that effort, because I know there’s so much work that needs to be done” when it comes to addressing mental health at the University.

The first meeting of the new Princeton Alumni Mental Health Coalition was held in July with about 10 people. Now there are about 40 members, and the group meets monthly, according to Wu, who is currently working toward a master’s in social work at Columbia. The coalition has a website (princetonalumnimhc.org) and applied for 501(c)(3) status in February in order to fundraise as a nonprofit.

At this year’s Reunions, the coalition plans to exhibit submissions from alumni and current students sharing personal stories about mental health. Submissions can be a song, dance, poem, or other formats, and participants may share anonymously if they choose.

“Hopefully we can learn something by talking to one another and help the [University] administration learn from our experiences as a broad array of alumni from different decades, different regions, different experiences,” said Michael Salama ’24, a documentary filmmaker who is leading the coalition’s storytelling and testimonial subcommittee. Salama hopes current students will relate to and be encouraged by alumni speaking about some of the same mental health difficulties they faced while at Princeton, but who still went on to lead successful lives.

The coalition is partnering closely with the current USG administration on the exhibit as well as the new joint One Too Many campaign, which is also meant to raise awareness about student deaths and mental health. (According to the campaign website, seven Princeton students have died by suicide since 2021.) The two groups have been regularly attending meetings together and are currently drafting a letter to the administration, which they hope to send in April, outlining related policy proposals.

“I would just love for the coalition to be more looped into some of the things that the undergraduates are currently struggling with,” said Aakansh Yerpude ’27, the current USG mental health chair, because “students see so much value in alumni.”

According to Yerpude, the USG and alumni coalition partnership is “an effort to make Princeton students feel less alone in their mental health struggles.”

The Healer

A pilgrim from the East, she saw
All souls precious and flawed.
She saw vulnerability
But held her tongue out of civility.
A child containing her negative inner world alone,
She knew to seek community when grown.
Like most in the Ivy League, she got lost in the sauce.
Mixing production with perfection yielded pride mixed with loss -
Loss of health, loss of mind, loss of heart -
Until a spark lit within her for a new course she’d chart.
Pursuing Psychology and East Asian Studies
and therapy
and student government
and institutional change,
She found community, acceptance, empathy
            and love of unbound range.
And finally, those words she had suppressed for years
Fought their way out her clenched lips, undeterred by dripping tears:
“Our status quo should not just accept strife!
Listen to each other! Support each other! Let people be free to ENJOY life!”