University service animal policies

From Service Dog Training

The presumed purpose of a disability resource center at a college or university is to provide students with disabilities the necessary accommodations for them to succeed in their college careers. Accommodations can include things such as providing note-takers, making books and handouts available in an accessible format, providing sign language interpreters or providing a quiet room or extended time for testing. All these things, and many other examples, are things that the disability resource center provides for the student above and beyond general resources available to the student body. Because of this, students are required to self-identify and provide documentation of their disability to obtain these services. At no time does a disability resource center require registration or documentation for services a student provides themselves. For instance, if a student needs a note-taker, and arranges for a friend to take notes for them in the classes they share, no registration or documentation is needed, but if the same student requests the disability resource center to provide a note-taker, then they may require registration or documentation.

What does this have to do with service dogs? A quick google search will tell you that many (though not all) colleges and universities require service animal users to register with their school's disability resource center to be "allowed" to have their dog on campus and in the classroom. To make things clear, I am not talking about service animals in dorms or other student housing, that's a rant for a later date, this is just talking about going to class or an event and then going back home. These colleges and universities require the student not only to register and declare their intent to use a service dog, but to disclose the details of their disability, provide documentation and usually a prescription for the dog from their physician, and sign a statement allowing the disability resource center to share all of this information with campus staff and to contact the student's doctors and therapists to discuss the student's disabilities. These guidelines also usually state that the disability resource center will consider the request for the student to use a service animal, and reserves the right to determine for themselves what acceptable accommodations are for the individual. This could very easily result in a disability resource center denying access to say, a graduate student who has been partnered with a service animal for several years already. Let me provide an example of a policy that could do this. From the University of Texas-Arlington:

Treatments, medications, accommodations/auxiliary aids, services currently prescribed or in use.

Provide a description of treatments, medications, accommodations/auxiliary aids and/or services currently in use and their estimated effectiveness in minimizing the impact of the condition(s). Include any significant side effects that may impact physical, perceptual, behavioral or cognitive performance. If you feel that any additional accommodations/auxiliary aids are warranted, please list them along with a clear rationale and related functional limitations. Any accommodations/auxiliary aids will be taken into consideration, but not automatically implemented.

So, according to this policy, the university reserves the right to refuse to allow any or all auxiliary aids a student may already be using, regardless of the recommendation of the physician. For instance, say a student who cannot write transfers into this university, and say he used a laptop to take notes for his first year or two of college. By this policy, the university could disallow this (very reasonable) accommodation despite a doctor's recommendation, and force the student to use another way of taking notes that may not work as well for that individual student.

Or say a mobility dog user starts graduate school at this university. If this student registers with disability services, they could find their dog prohibited from campus because canes and walkers can service a similar purpose. It would all depend on the whims of the committee deciding.

Obviously, I have issues with this. And quite frankly I can say this much: I do not need academic accommodations, never have in fact. And since I do not need a disability resource center to help me with anything, I'm certainly not going to provide them with my personal medical information and allow them to distribute it across campus. I will not register my dog with anyone on campus, and any attempt to force that will result in a lawsuit. Please, if you have encountered trouble with policies like these, or if you have been forced to register your service dog to attend classes at a college or university, let me know. This could affect a lot of people, and it is very likely this could affect me as I change schools during my academic career.

--Tiffany Huggard-Lee 01:24, 19 July 2008 (CDT)