Few college administrators may move as quickly to update policies as disability officers do, and for good reason: They know that lawyers and civil-rights investigators are poised to jump on any wrong move.
Two policies now up for re-evaluation concern campus life: whether emotional-support animals can live in dormitories, and whether students who feel suicidal can be told to leave campus.
A decade ago, colleges had significant leeway to use their own judgment in such cases. In that era, many institutions told students to leave their support animals at home. And they often required suicidal students to take time off until they could prove they had recovered.
But in both realms, court cases and new federal regulations have altered the landscape and encouraged colleges to place more weight on student preferences and the opinions of outside medical experts.
In the past year, both the University of Nebraska at Kearney and Kent State University reached settlements with the Justice Department in which they agreed to pay former students who were not allowed to bring emotional-support dogs to campus. Both universities also agreed to change their policies as part of the settlements, to permit such animals for students with disabilities who need them, and with certain caveats, such as making the owners responsible for any damage caused by the animal and retaining the right to deny animals that are too large for campus dorms.
This special report examines the challenges that students, academics, and colleges face in dealing with physical disabilities as well as conditions that are less visible.
Most students ask to bring a dog or cat, but universities have also received applications for tarantulas, ferrets, and pigs. Some studies show that the presence of domestic animals can help students suffering from anxiety or depression. But disability officers say it’s also well known that plenty of online therapists are willing to issue “accommodation letters” to just about anyone, for fees that average about $150.
Given the recent legal settlements, many colleges aren’t asking a lot of questions when students show up with a pet and an accommodation letter. Laura Warde, an access specialist at Oklahoma State University, says her institution “immediately” loosened its policy after the Kearney decision. “I am not a doctor,” she says. “If they come in with the appropriate documentation, I approve it.”
The new policy is having a big impact. A few years ago, Oklahoma State had just one emotional-support animal in campus housing — a cat that helped comfort a graduate student’s autistic daughter. This year 66 students have emotional-support animals — so many, in fact, that the university is considering creating a pet-friendly dorm to reduce complaints from other students about allergies and phobias.
“It’s like Captain Kirk with tribbles,” Ms. Warde says, referring to the rapidly multiplying creatures on a Star Trek episode.
Northern Arizona University has about 25 emotional-support animals on campus. A few years ago, it received only a few requests each year; this year, it got about 85. Half the requests are dropped when students learn that documentation is required, says Jamie Axelrod, director of disability resources.
But the Kearney settlement made clear that colleges can’t place too big a burden on those students, such as requiring a psychoeducational evaluation. So Northern Arizona, like Oklahoma State, generally approves requests from students who bring letters.
“In a sense, we are dependent on the ethical commitment of the providers who are giving out these letters,” Mr. Axelrod says.
Meanwhile, the changing climate for handling students at risk of committing suicide comes as more students with mental-health disabilities are enrolling in college. A 2015 survey of nearly 17,000 students at 40 colleges and universities by the American College Health Association found that 36 percent of undergraduates had “felt so depressed it was difficult to function” at some point in the past year, and 10 percent had seriously considered committing suicide.
In 2011 the Justice Department updated regulations for the Americans With Disabilities Act, throwing into flux how colleges should handle a student who had contemplated or attempted suicide. Before the change, the regulations permitted colleges to remove students from campus if they posed a “direct threat” to themselves or others. The new language spoke only of the “health or safety of others.”
Since then the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has found that some institutions, including Quinnipiac University and Western Michigan University, which forced students who had attempted suicide to leave the campus, had discriminated against those students.
The upshot, according to many disability administrators: Colleges now need to be much more careful about how they proceed with such students. Some administrators are unhappy with the changing climate, arguing that there are times when a student needs to be at home to recover under close supervision, and without the social and academic stresses of college life. But plenty of students who have had a suicidal episode on campus have argued that colleges “punished” them, and sent them into a deeper spiral, by forcing them to take time off.
Colleges should no longer look to remove a student who attempted suicide but who could return and handle an academic course load with some help, says Diego Demaya, a lawyer and disability-rights expert at the Southwest ADA Center, in Houston.
“Disciplinary action is off the table,” he says. “It would tend to discriminate by punishing someone who is having a mental crisis.”
