Accessibility fail: my professor refusing to meet accommodations approved by the college because ‘no one’s special’ in his class

kaijutegu:

accessibilityfails:

Report his ass to the dean of the department and possibly the president of the college. They are legally required to provide any reasonable accommodation. If the college takes his side… media loves stories like this and if you don’t mind being in the spotlight a bit can be very effective in ensuring he has his own logic applied to him. No one is special in the eyes of the law either.

This is extremely illegal and needs to be reported!

The steps above are not wrong, but speaking as someone who works in academia (grad student, I teach and TA a lot and have a lot of experience with this kind of thing), you probably want your first step to be the department head and/or the director of undergraduate studies in the department. (Unless the professor *is* that person, then go straight to the dean.) Department heads typically give a quicker response. Expediency is key here- this guy needs to shape up before midterm grade times. Also, if this is a class in your major, tell the director of undergraduate studies that Professor X’s hostility is making you reconsider. Part of the DUGS’s job is to retain majors, and if they’re any good at their job, they’ll be willing to help you.

You also might want to approach the dean of students rather than the academic dean; the dean of students’ job within the US university system is to make sure that students are represented and taken care of. They tend to act more swiftly than academic deans and have more resources.

In this case, I would suggest not asking your disability resources center (or whatever your college calls it) to step in, as unfortunately, he probably won’t take them seriously. For professors who bungle accommodations, they’re an excellent first step, but for professors who try that “nobody’s special” bullshit, it’s unlikely he’ll respect their authority. 

Because… he knows what he’s doing is illegal. He knows. There’s no way your college’s human resources and ethics departments don’t make every single one of their faculty members go through an annual compliance training. Title IX, responsibilities under the ADA, and the university’s own ethics code of conduct- there’s no way he hasn’t been made to sign off on knowing the rules. The likely situation here is that he just doesn’t care because he’s ableist and (wrongly) thinks his class is soooo important that he can circumvent the law.