ADA Housing Accommodation Causes Concern: The Process and Next Steps
Quinn Bonney & Ada Lambert | April 6, 2023
Emails went out to Warren Wilson College (WWC) students on April 3 regarding single-room housing accommodations. 23 students received an email from the Disability Access Review Committee (DARC) expressing that their medical documentation met the criteria for a medical single.
For these students, the news was welcomed. However, frustration and disappointment were expressed by Clover Davis, a WWC student who was one of the 50 students who were not granted a medical single room.
“I feel very invalidated because of this, and I feel like the school does not care,” Davis said. “Not only did I go through the huge process of going to my psychiatrist and asking for medical single accommodations and receiving those papers, they just ignored them and completely did not care about what I had to say or what my doctor had to say about it.”
Previously at WWC, approximately 100 singles were given to students living on campus. For the 2023 fall semester, only 23 were granted to current students, while some rooms are allocated for the incoming class.
Jay Roberts, provost and vice president of academic affairs, recognizes this is a disruptive change for students. However, he said, it is necessary to maintain legal standards and criteria for the college.
WWC is in the two-year process of re-accreditation which requires a review of the college's compliance with federal statutes. These statutes include policies on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Emotional Support Animals (ESAs).
“With ADA, we work with an outside legal counsel who's an expert in this area,” Roberts said. “And that legal counsel said, ‘you're going to need to tighten up and change your policies and procedures related to the ADA, and housing accommodation and emotional support animal acceptance on campus.’”
The legal counsel reviewed WWC’s policies and gave criteria for the DARC to use when reviewing student disability cases. Simply put, the criteria are based on expressed medical documentation.
“We have to get specific documentation from a medical provider,” Roberts said. “That's not just, ‘I know John, and John's a good person, and John should have what John needs.’ But, ‘here's the specific condition, here is in my medical determination why they qualify and must have it.’”
Students passed medical forms to the DARC, which reviews those documents and makes determinations as to whether or not they reach the threshold for what is or is not considered a medical accommodation.
That threshold determines whether or not a student has access to a medical single and/or allowance of an ESAs on campus.
“We need to be fair and equitable to the process, or we're violating the legal standard,” Roberts said.
In previous years, there was a more straightforward procedure for students requesting a medical single. Nat Taylor, a WWC student, has had a single room since the beginning of the 2022-2023 year but was denied for the upcoming fall semester.
“Last year, paperwork was so much easier and they were responsive,” Taylor said. “I've sent them three emails since they denied me [this year] and they haven't acknowledged any of them. I get that they're busy, but these housing accommodations are going to determine who comes back next semester.”
In addition to this difficulty with communication, the criteria for applying for housing accommodations have become stricter in terms of the application deadlines.
“You have to get things in by deadlines,” Roberts said. “There's a reason to get them in by deadlines that's both legal and to allow our regular housing process to proceed in the way it's supposed to.”
For students who did not receive a medical single, Roberts believes that the school will work with them to find other ways to accommodate their needs. He suggested that students reach out to disability resources on campus for their specific case.
The college has put out a waitlist for students to pay $1000 a semester for a single room. Davis feels that this is unfair to the students who were denied medical singles.
“It feels like a cash grab,” Davis said. “They know they're gonna have more free spaces, however, they're so out of money, they need money from us, so they're gonna make us pay for it. Especially from the people who need singles for medical accommodations.”
Despite the option to pay, it is unlikely that there will be availability on campus, as the school is currently at housing capacity.
“The college has always had a provision that a student who would like a single, provided, a single is available [and] has the option of paying more money in order to get said single, that's in the assumption that we have available singles that are not part of our ADA medic medical accommodation process,” Roberts said. “So the idea that we would have random singles available for people who wanted to pay extra for them is just not possible. Because we're already at capacity and we don't have available dorm space that somebody could pay extra for, even if they wanted us.”
The next step for students seeking specific housing needs is to contact residence life about their needs.
“We want to work with students, we want to hear what the issues are, and where their expressed needs are,” Roberts said. “For example [we] can work with students who need to live somewhere quiet or drug-free. The national standard is that if you don't have a tight end and high bar for what counts, you potentially as an institution, are filling up all of your available spaces, with folks who may not reach that standard, while somebody else who definitely reaches the standard now is left out of the process.”