It seems to me this woman has a lot of emotional issues.

Focus on what was RIGHT about the scenario-- for example, she recognized that this was not an appropriate testing environment for your DD.

This took us about a year with my DD's four year uni, btw, because their
"testing center" was similarly a cube farm with higher walls and doors-- but it still allowed FOOD in that setting, which meant that it was no better (and in some ways worse) than a classroom setting. DD tried it a total of.... once--

before she realized that it wasn't workable.

She's had great luck making arrangements with individual professors for testing more safely.  Her tips and mine:

1.  Ask well in advance of testing-- that is, get it onto the radar early.

2.  Apologize for the inconvenience, and explain that rather than handling it through disability, you'd prefer to work out something convenient for both you (the student) and the professor.

3.  Offer to take the exam in the professor's office/lab space-- the hour BEFORE it is offered to the class at large.  That way it's clear that you're on the up-and-up, you're not looking to take advantage of anything, and you're genuinely trying to make the faculty member's life easier, too.  If you need extra time, this is also a good way to manage that-- offer to START the exam that way, and finish it in class (if you get 200% time) or finish it in the half hour following class time.  Why do faculty prefer this?  Well, because it allows THEM to proctor, and yes-- as you've seen for yourself, there are questions about integrity at academic testing centers, and faculty KNOW it, and it MIGHTILY peeves them... and because for faculty that write de novo assessments, it means less lead time-- important in a class where they may not know until Wednesday what should be covered on Friday's midterm.

It sounds like a productive and yet eye opening meeting.

I'd have dd report it. Bet you $1 there's already something else in that woman's file with HR. Document document document. Especially if for some reason the nice lady is absent the day your dd has to take an exam. It could become "she said" but your dd will have already started a paper trail...

I'd also have her note in that letter that the meeting was NOT private and that she questions her HIPPA privacy when students were poping in and out.

As for the lack of academic integrity, I wouldn't touch that. However, it makes me question the school itself. Is this a 4 year college? Or community college? Giving answers? Really?!!

Welcome back, btw- I remember you from before! 

Good luck!

Good luck to you and DD.

Wackattack, the letter you posted is scary to me.  It lumps FAs, which are potentially life threatening, in with all other disabilities.  I hope that over the next 4 years my son will grow into the person who could handle a meeting with the disability office at college by himself without me but as of now he isn't anywhere close to that.  The attitude of the person who wrote the letter was a real know it all, at least how it sounds to me.  Pushing a 504 back to parents and saying, "don't need it" would not be something to which I would react well.  The disability officer would first have to actually *listen* well to either my son or to me or a doctor's letter or something so my son and our family would know the officer understood his particular needs.  A cookie cutter approach to FAs won't work for all, as CM's daughter and others show.  I will only send DS to a school that I will trust to take good care of him.  Thankfully there are all these young adults (and their parents) paving the way for us so I expect by the time DS gets there, things will be much, much easier for him than it has been. 

The willingness to listen and learn and have the awareness that one might not know all there is to know on a topic is what I find missing in the things you posted about the disability officer, and that would worry me a great deal.  I hope it all goes smoothly.  I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you and didn't read all the responses so don't know what your last post even meant. 

Thanks for posting this, though. It is good to know at this point that that type of attitude exists among disability officers.

One last thing, in general I think that once kids go to college, they should take care of themselves.  This is just one topic where I don't think that fully applies, at least until procedures for how the child will get safe food and stay safe are established.

^   


exactly.

Though we've been (over the past few months) treated as though this is DD's parents "coddling" her, or "enabling" her to avoid "growing up" and dealing with things for herself.  {sigh}

It's a no-win situation in some ways.  That's why I make them OBJECT in person, and to my DD's face.  Honestly-- I go if it's a thing that I'd be comfortable doing if DD were, say-- 25 years old and not 16.  Most of the meetings I've attended have been that type.  It angers me that some uni staffers have framed that as immaturity on the part of my 16yo for wanting someone else there.

Another option is to retain a legal advisor to attend those meetings.  That way, it isn't mom or dad.  It's just expensive.  (We've taken that approach as well, btw.)

One thing that we did which I think has been (and continues to be) extremely useful in getting DD the accommodations that she in particular needs (as opposed to choosing from a menu of options that don't really fit her in particular, I mean)-- was to consider carefully what "standard" looks like at any particular institution-- and then decide what it needed to look like for DD in particular.  That is, are freshman MANDATED to live in group dorm settings on campus?  and then figure out if there is any reasonable way that such a thing can be made to work for or not.

In DD's case, for example, we didn't really need to fight this one, but we learned that there would be NO decoupling of housing and dining plans.  They insisted that THEY were going to "work with" her to "find safe choices."  Even if we were not comfortable that ANY food they prepped in shared spaces could be "safe" for her to eat.  For us, that violates a primary rule of management-- that DD always gets the decision-making power of what constitutes "safe enough" for her to eat.  SHE decides-- because the consequences are hers, too.  Not some dietician from university housing and dining.
  Now, DD also isn't most people, even most people with food allergies.  So for 95% or people with food allergies, working with the dining staff probably WILL work.  But this is why individual accommodations are-- um-- individual.

We went in with DD's 504 plan, which had been tweaked during her junior year so that it was prepared to make the hop to higher ed.  Our allergist also went to bat with explanations of more unusual accommodations-- like individual testing.  DD is aerosol sensitive, and that being said, smelling her allergens makes her VERY anxious (gee, I wonder why?  ) and impairs her exam performance in a big way.  In a small class, she doesn't use that accommodation, mostly-- she prefers to be low key and use preferential seating (another accommodation) instead.

She also has priority registration-- and I cannot begin to tell you how important THAT has proven.  She has the ability to make sure that she can select classes that allow her enough time to eat properly, those that don't virtually INVITE other students to be bringing food into lecture, and those which are smaller (and therefore easier to exert some control over the environment and her own safety).    It also means that she can (with careful planning) stick with professors that have demonstrated a willingness to cooperate gladly. 

I really recommend going in with a 504 plan in hand-- or at least the previous school's plan.  Then, allow at least 4-6 weeks for the process to work and generate a university-specific plan.

Also, talk to your child about what s/he feels is TRULY necessary.  I had to convince DD that the testing accommodation was a good idea.  She didn't really understand just how prevalent food consumption would be around her in college.  She does now, of course-- but going in with more accommodations than you think you will want EVERY day is not necessarily a bad thing in higher ed.  They are there if the student CHOOSES to access them.

This is another big difference-- if the student chooses to, s/he can ignore the fact that the plan is on file with disability at all.  There is no mandate to use the accommodations in any class-- much less EVERY class.  It's an individual judgment call for the student.  So a class where nobody ever eats-- no announcement, no food controls are needed.  Ever.  A situation where it's a tiny class and everyone knows you, similarly-- just last night, in fact, peanut butter snacks showed up backstage at the food table-- and the stage manager simply gathered up the unsafe stuff and took it up to the tech booth instead.  No big deal.


The single hardest thing for me has been accepting that NOBODY but my DD is obligated to be responsible for her autoinjector use.  NOBODY else has to be trained, and SHE has to be pretty assertive. 


I know that there are a lot of threads about this in the past four or five years.  Mac, Rebekah, and myself have all recently navigated it-- having kids travel without us, live without us, and navigate the open and chaotic setting of a college campus without us.    Some of the most useful threads may not be in schools, but in Teens instead-- the law is different from K-12 to higher ed, after all.




Honestly-- I wouldn't assume that the person that gave you such a nasty vibe at the office necessarily sets the tone for the entire office, either.  Could have just been a bad day, could be that she's kind of a troll...  you never know.  I've also decided that I'm completely comfortable being Bad Cop to DD's Good Cop with her university, too-- so I may ask "rude" questions, or be pushier than she is... and that's just fine.

The other technique that I recommend is that we BOTH show up for a meeting, and when she's called into said meeting, I ask if she would like me to come in or not-- right there in front of whoever she's meeting with.  That way they KNOW that it's her driving my being there or not-- not me.