grammaprue
New Member
We have an 18 year old College student who was placed on academic suspension after her Freshman year. The college is a private college in Virginia. We live in North Carolina. She is and has been generally an A/B student. She was good enough for the school to give her a $17,000 grant. She struggled in school this past year. Unfortunately, it was discovered too late through test from a psychologist and her general practioner that she has Attention Deficit, Hyperactivity Disorder. Her type takes the form, that although she can be still for long periods of time, her mind is not. This form prevents her from completing tasks as her mind prevents her from staying focused. Both, the doctors feel she can do the work in college with the aide of medication and behavorial therapy. We have made two appeals to the school for reconsideration of the suspension to allow her the chance to prove that with proper tools she CAN do the job, but they refuse to allow it. They contend she had help provided to her at school and refused to seek it. She did go to the health dept and advised them that her doctor thought she had ADHD, but was advised they did not do the testing on campus, the center did not advise her of any help in the meantime she could get from school for the problem, plus until diagnosed as ADHD, they would not treat her as "disabled. The doctor says that had she asked for help, she would not have gotten the kind she needed because she had not been diagnosed with ADHD yet and she would still have had the problems. Also, according to her doctor the very nature of her disability makes it difficult for her to ask for help. The doctor feels she struggled with school through her high school years, but when she got to college the workload was just so much more that with her disability, un-treated, because we did not know about it at the time, prevented her from being successful. The school is treating her as a "normal" freshman entering college and just "goofing" off and are refusing to admit she really had/has a legitimate problem and refuses to re-admit her. If she does not go this semester, she will lose her scholarship which means she will NOT return at all. I feel the school is operating on one of two philosophies, either she is not ADHA and they are refusing to accept the doctors diagnosis, or they are accepting the doctors diagnosis and feel they will have to provide special accomodation to her because of her ADHD and thus do not want to accept her back. Their final letter still takes the same tack that they feel she needs to "grow" up and does not really even recognize her problem, which I believe is discriminatory. Do we have a case for discrimination and what is the minimal I personally can do legally, what can I tell them to get them to reconsider? Thank you. E Collins
