[Georgia_ahead] FW: Dorm Access Case Settled

[Bonnie S. Martin]

Hi all,

 

At the GA-Ahead conference last week, a question about charging a student
with Asperger's for a single room when needed for an accommodation came up. 

 

The below was posted by Scott Lissner on the dsshe-list today. Thought it
would be of interest.

 

Bonnie

 

Bonne S. Martin, Director

Center for Disability Services

Georgia Perimeter College

678-891-3385

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Disabled Student Services in Higher Education
[mailto:DSSHE-L at LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU] On Behalf Of Lissner, Scott
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 9:57 AM
To: DSSHE-L at LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
Subject: Dorm Access Case Settled

 

The article below is from  Inside Higher Education and announces the

settlement of a case.  

 

The basis for the complaint: An entering student who used a wheelchair

was initially assigned to an inaccessible Residence hall and was then

transferred to an accessible hall (that had a higher room rate).  In

addition to being billed at the highre rate she was placed in and

charged for a double room "because the room was not large enough to hold

me, my equipment and a roommate.  

 

The settlement sets no precedent but it is worth considering the issues

it raises.  How would this inform handling requests from singles by

students with Psychological Disabilities, Aspergers, or ADD?  

 

 

 

March 19

The Price of Disability

Texas State University has agreed to pay $6,000 to a student who uses a

wheelchair and who says she was charged nearly double for her dormitory

room because the cheaper campus housing option she wanted was

inaccessible.

A Texas State spokesman emphasized Friday that the settlement does not

suggest any wrongdoing on the university's part. But experts and

advocates for people with disabilities stressed that federal law on the

matter - requiring that colleges and other entities offer access to all

of their different categories of service, and, in lieu of that, absorb

the cost of any necessary upgrades on their own - is well-established.

"It's an analogous situation, but [the Department of Transportation] has

proposed regulations out on cruise ships, and it's the same principle:

If a person with a disability that needs an accessible room also wants

the cheapest cabin, but the cheapest cabin is not accessible, they have

to give the person the next higher-up cabin that is accessible at the

lower rate," said Kenneth Shiotani, a senior staff attorney working on

housing and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) issues for the

National Disability Rights Network

<http://www.napas.org/issues/ada/default.htm> .

At Texas State, the university originally assigned Bailey Gosda, a

sophomore, to an inaccessible dormitory her freshman year, said Lucy

Wood, a lawyer who filed a complaint on Gosda's behalf charging that the

university's actions were in violation of ADA and Section 504 of the

Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Gosda, who has cerebral palsy and relies

upon a wheelchair and a walker, was subsequently assigned to live alone

in an accessible room in a more expensive dormitory.

Her housing bill - complete with a surcharge because the room was deemed

too small to accommodate a roommate along with Gosda's equipment - was

double that of her peers in traditional freshman housing, or

approximately an extra $1,500 per semester.

Rather than paying $1,612 a semester for a traditional double in the

cheaper dorm with a roommate, she paid a basic per-semester room rate of

$2,095, multiplied by 1.5 to reflect the surcharge for living alone -

meaning her per-semester payments for the room totaled $3,142.50.

Gosda had specifically requested both traditional freshman housing and a

roommate in writing prior to starting at Texas State.

"[S]he is a student who is incurring a large amount of debt in order to

attend college at her own expense, and who but for her disability would

elect to live in the cheaper dorm and with a roommate," Wood wrote in a

November letter to William Fly, Texas State's counsel, in which she

rejected an earlier $725 settlement offer. "To the extent that the

accommodations selected by the university (that she live without a

roommate in the College Inn because no room was accessible to her once

the roommate and roommate's belongings were put in any room) were

necessitated by her disability, they were required to be offered to her

at no cost to her."

Wood, who as a lawyer for the nonprofit Advocacy, Inc

<http://www.advocacyinc.org/index.cfm> . waived her fees for the case,

said she was pleased with the settlement and eager to improve conditions

for future Texas State students with disabilities. Wood recently wrote

and submitted a draft policy that would better address disability issues

on campus for the university's consideration, and said that she has

received word that Texas State officials are reviewing it.

"I'm just glad that it's over," Gosda said Friday afternoon, adding that

she was also pleased with the terms of the settlement but did wish she

had been compensated for the hours upon hours she spent writing letters

and speaking to various staff members about her situation. It seemed,

Gosda said in explanation of the university's slow response, as though

no protocol or policy was in place to address her needs. "I don't think

they really knew how to react to the situation. As far as I know, they

haven't had this kind of situation happen before. I guess they thought

if they didn't answer me I would go away."

Many Texas State University administrative offices were closed Friday

for spring vacation, and neither the university counsel nor the director

of the Office for Disability Services returned e-mail requests for

comment. However, Mark S. Hendricks, a university spokesman, said he

believes "that the interests of both parties are served well by this

settlement." He described the case via e-mail as "a mutually agreed upon

legal settlement between both parties for financial considerations with

no stipulation of wrongdoing on the part of Texas State."

"There was no judicial finding that any money was unlawfully collected,"

Hendricks stressed, when asked via e-mail if there were any inaccuracies

in a press release outlining the basic facts of the case

<http://www.napas.org/media/pr/070228tx.htm> .

(http://www.napas.org/media/pr/070228tx.htm)

But advocates working on disability issues said the law is clear on the

question of whether the university could charge Gosda extra for the more

pricey room. Shiotani added however that he personally is not aware of a

clear resolution to the question of whether colleges can implement a

surcharge for a single room when no acceptable double room is available

for a student requiring extra space. Cases in which students with

disabilities are automatically assigned single rooms, despite their

desire for doubles, come up periodically, said Shiotani, who cited in

particular a 1993 case, Coleman v. Zatechka, finding that the University

of Nebraska violated federal law by refusing to include a student who

needed the services of a personal attendant in the random roommate pool.

Wendy Wilkinson, project director of the Southwest ADA Center

<http://www.dlrp.org/> , one of 10 centers across the country offering

technical assistance on disability law, said all colleges need to do

more to offer disabled students access to one of their key programmatic

offerings: The roommate experience. And students certainly shouldn't be

penalized financially if that program is closed to them, she said.

"It's something colleges need to think about," Wilkinson said, "so that

someone with a wheelchair who comes isn't simply segregated into one

room simply because they have extra equipment."

- Elizabeth Redden <mailto:elizabeth.redden at insidehighered.com> 

The original story and user comments can be viewed online at

http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/03/19/texasstate

</news/2007/03/19/texasstate> .

 

 

 

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