Many students who live on campus have emotional support animals. However, some students are now experiencing difficulties applying to get a registered emotional support animal so they can bring it on campus.
Campus housing has reasonably strict policies regarding unauthorized animals on campus. Without registering an approved ESA, housing staff, facilities staff and resident assistants may find themselves having an allergic reaction or accidentally letting loose an animal they didn’t know was in a dorm room.
However, this should not be a reason to make the process of applying for an ESA more difficult. The process is already a rigorous one, and providing all the necessary personal health information to the university will allow for disability services to properly document and accommodate students’ needs. There should be no need for the process to be distressing or invasive.
For individuals with mental illness, validation is often a struggle. The world we live in is still defined and controlled through ableist language and thought, and discrimination against neurodivergent individuals and people with disabilities still occurs regularly. For people living with a disability, it can be difficult to remind themselves that their problems are valid when society makes light of them and refuses to treat them seriously.
In such cases, creating an arduous and difficult process for people to “prove” they need an ESA can be invalidating and discouraging for people who need extra support.
Yes, the ESA rule has been abused at universities. People enjoy having their pets with them. However, by creating such stringent rules to prevent people who don’t need pets from having them, the university process has disregarded the needs of its neurodivergent and disabled community members.
Why should it not be easy to obtain an ESA? If there are policies in place to handle registered ESAs, would an increase in ESAs cause an issue for housing officials? Creating a more lax policy regarding ESAs on campus would likely encourage students to register their animals instead of hiding them and hoping for the best.
By creating an easier process, the university would not be letting students have pets because they want them. They would be providing support for their students and community members when it’s needed most.
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