About to be a freshman in college. Trying to get the accommodations since I have really bad anxiety, noise hypersensitivity, and Alexithymia. Do I have to pay more for the single dorm if I ever get accepted in the accommodations? I apologize if I’m asking a stupid question.
No question is stupid at all, you don’t know so you are asking which makes it valid. Anyway it depends from country to country. I assume you are in the US because of the language you have used, in which case it’s likely to vary from state to state. Here in the UK, at my sister’s university anyway, she got her accommodation at the regular price but got one of the better rooms because of her arthritis. I would talk to the university/college you are planning on going to, my university has a disabilities office who can handle stuff like this and I hope yours does too so I would speak to them. I hope this helps.
I have to pay more….
Ah shit man I’m sorry that sucks, can you get something like a DSA payment to cover that? (DSA is the disability student allowance here in the UK)
I’m not even sure if there’s one(I live in Texas).
Not even on a federal level? (I could be naive about how nice the US treats ND people here)
I can’t find any. Guess I have to rely on Fasfa.
It depends…if you went through the accommodation process in a way that is hard to dispute, Submitting an accommodation request written by a licensed healthcare professional with a history of having worked with you along with a proof of diagnosis (often can be done in the same letter) in the designated manner the institution has, it should be strong enough that it is granted but there are paths of denial that are not illegal.
They can deny if they have a really small number of employees, basically impossible for a college.
They can deny if the accommodation is ‘unreasonable’ or put an ‘unreasonable’ expense on the university. I don’t foresee this as unreasonable with the caveat that they don’t have to give you the dorm/floor you prefer as long as they give you a room. It is unreasonable to displace another student for this though. If they have accepted a full complement of in-dorm students they don’t have to tell one they are out of luck because they don’t have space. This shouldn’t be an issue right now as the FASA issues mean most universities are scrambling for students, with a 7-12% shortfall expected. It’s also hard for a university to argue that giving one person a single room that could be a double occupancy is going to be the thing that creates financial hardship. A lot of universities have smaller single occupancy dorm rooms that they usually charge a slight premium for that can also be used for this and charge the standard rate, reducing income loss even more.
They can also deny if they can submit a way to address your needs without providing the specific accommodations requested. This isn’t rare. Universities often have licensed healthcare professionals who do a lot of this. Some do it because people not in need abuse the system and others do it because they are jerks. It can go to court though(but costs money) and judges don’t like organizational providers saying they know more than established providers about someone’s needs, especially if it looks like they are being cheap.
There are a couple other avenues of denial but the one used most is just to make the process to get accommodations burdensome and unclear.
Edit: There is a loophole that education institutions don’t have to accept an outside diagnosis as long as they provide a reasonable assessment of their own. It’s rarely used after high school but it can be used. If they do this the assessment is extremely unlikely to be comprehensive. This strategy of denial doesn’t hold up well if challenged but it does have to be challenged (in court). That can take time and does take money.
Hey /u/AsianEvadingTaxes, thank you for your post at /r/autism. Our rules can be found here. All approved posts get this message. If you do not see your post you can message the moderators here.
Thanks!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.