University of Houston Disability Services
From Service Dog Training
University Disability Services: Worst Practices – The University of Houston
College and university disability services exist to negotiate the process of reasonable accommodations between a student with a disability and an educational institution required by law to accommodate people with disabilities. Generally, the process works like this: a student will visit the disability services office, identify themselves as a person with a disability, and find out the procedures for making an accommodation request. The student then provides the disability services office with medical documentation proving the disability and sometimes listing the recommended accommodations. The student and a representative from the disability office then discuss what accommodations will work best for the student and are reasonable for the university to provide. Once the student and the office have decided on a set of reasonable accommodations, a document describing these accommodations is drawn up for each class the student is taking, and the student gives a copy to each of their teachers to ensure that the reasonable accommodations are provided.
Recently I've been investigating best practices in college/university disability service offices. As tends to happen any time a best practice is investigated, some impressively subpar practices have come to light as well. The worst one I've seen so far comes from the University of Houston.
Among the policies I've read, the University of Houston is rather unique because they add an extra step to the accommodations process. After the disability services office and the student have agreed on a set of reasonable accommodations, the university then gives each professor the power to refuse these accommodations. This means that after a student has provided all requested documentation to the disability services office and has agreed with the university on a set of reasonable accommodations, the student can have these reasonable accommodations denied by a professor who knows nothing of the nature of the student's disability or of the legal requirements for the provision of reasonable accommodation.
Is this practice legal? Of course not. Public colleges and universities which receive federal funds must comply with both Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the ADA. The relevant regulation for section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act states "Academic requirements. A recipient to which this subpart applies shall make such modifications to its academic requirements as are necessary to ensure that such requirements do not discriminate or have the effect of discriminating, on the basis of handicap, against a qualified handicapped applicant or student." [1] Likewise, the relevant section of Title II of the ADA states "A public entity shall make reasonable modifications in policies, practices, or procedures when the modifications are necessary to avoid discrimination on the basis of disability, unless the public entity can demonstrate that making the modifications would fundamentally alter the nature of the service, program, or activity." [2]
I think it is fairly clear from these regulations that public universities (and private universities under Title III of the ADA) have an obligation to make reasonable accommodations to students with disabilities. The law does not say "accommodate if you feel like it" or "accommodate if the professor wants to." It says that a public entity (in this case a university) SHALL make reasonable modifications. It seems highly unlikely to me that a professor with no knowledge of the student's disability and no understanding of federal laws and the technicalities of reasonable accommodations would be able to decide that an accommodation is unreasonable when the disability services office has already evaluated the accommodations and has found them to be reasonable. One would hope that no professor would ever deny a student reasonable accommodations. After all, it would seem that a professor would want students to have the best possible learning experience and would strive to accommodate their students. Unfortunately, as is often the case, when a group is given unlimited power, some members of that group will abuse that power. In 2006, a student at the University of Houston with an undisputed disability obtained a reasonable accommodation request form for a required class. The professor turned down the request for accommodations. The student then sued. I have not been able to determine how the lawsuit turned out, but it appears that after further confrontation with the university over disability accommodations, the student withdrew from the university.
The University of Houston’s mission statement says, "The mission of the University of Houston is to discover and disseminate knowledge through the education of a diverse population of traditional and non-traditional students." If, by failing to provide a legally required accommodation, they denied a student his education, how have they fulfilled their mission? Has anyone become better educated? Certainly not. They have made a statement though...a very clear one. The statement is that the University of Houston’s commitment to educating a diverse population ends where the disability community begins.
--Tiffany Huggard-Lee 22:38, 5 March 2010 (CST)
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| Author | Tiffany Huggard-Lee + |
| Post date | 6 March 2010 04:38 + |
