BA of general studies?

justmytwocents
Tue, 23 Mar 2010 01:58:44 +0000

Hi TwistedxKiss!

Just some thoughts.

While the suggestion by another poster to get a lawyer and/or talk with someone above the disability services office folks may still prove to be a good idea, unfortunately the courts have pretty firmly established that higher ed institutions can create their own academic regulations like foreign language requirements for certain degrees and are not legally required to alter them in many circumstances (see Guckenberger v. BU, where the court decided “neither the ADA nor the Rehabilitation Act requires a university to provide course substitutions that the university rationally concludes would alter an essential part of its academic program.”) If UM mandated that all degree-candidates in any major had to complete four semesters of a foreign language regardless of its relevancy to the major, for example, or if a school had a swimming requirement and refused to alter it for a quadriplegic student, it would be a different situation. That said I think many academics and the courts would argue such language proficiency seems reasonable for a bachelor’s degree in political science.

I say this not to discourage or dissuade you, but rather to save you the time and energy of seeking legal counsel (of course, you should still feel free to pursue that if you would like). If this is a subject that interests you, a good read that specifically addresses foreign language requirements at universities in relation to ADA is James P. Kelly’s “Consistency and Cooperation: The Lessons of Guckenberger v. Boston University” from the Journal of Law & Education (v28 n2 p319-25 Apr 1999).

My other comment is more of a heads up and/or helpful hint. If you are interested in going to law school and thus would need to take the LSAT, you should know that the LSAC folks are particularly persnickety, for lack of a better word, when it comes to providing/allowing test accommodations. In other words, get started NOW if you want to take the test in the next year. Seems silly, but they have been reticent to provide some accommodations that seem almost basic (i.e. students with vision impairments or blindness who needed readers and/or large print and then were denied extra time to utilize those tools - it makes sense that if it takes one longer to read because of a visual impairment, or if it takes some time for a reader to read out loud all of the test questions, they would be given extended time, doesn’t it? Not to the LSAC folks!). If you believe you will need accommodations on the LSAT, I would begin the process of procuring them about a year before you want to take the test. It might take that long to secure them.

Good luck to you.