After listening to the podcast, my reaction is essentially: okay! I think we’re experiencing a particularly rapid change in mass consciousness with regard to a lot of important issues in the last decade, and accessibility is one of them. I think some aspects of what are being discussed are institutional and not in my control — access ramps, the red tape around getting accommodations, etc. — but what I can control is within the classroom, on the syllabus, and in my e-mails. I’m a big rubber stamp. Whether I get requests for accommodation through official avenues or direct requests from students, I just say yes. Why not?

For one thing, I tend not to have many such requests, and the most common thing disability services ask for is extra time taking tests, which doesn’t apply to my classes. On the other hand, denying requests seems pointless. The podcast brings up the idea of “faking.” I don’t believe people fake disabilities, but on the other hand I do tend to get at least 1 or 2 11th hour requests per semester for extensions vaguely citing the student’s mental health. And my response is: okay! Take more time. Who am I to doubt such a claim? What could possibly be gained if I do? I take the “better to let 100 guilty people go free than jail 1 innocent person” approach. If someone just procrastinated and decides to lie to me, so be it. They’re only hurting themselves but I’m not interested in becoming a PI.

Part of this I think has to do with my own view on classroom competitiveness that the speakers on the podcast don’t address. Actually, Kat Macfarlane makes an observation I found interesting. She says there’s angst about accommodations because students might receive an “advantage.” Her response (if I remember correctly) is that accommodations are not really advantages, they’re a necessary corrective. But I found myself wondering: what does “advantage” mean? I just don’t see my students in competition. She teaches law so maybe there’s a different culture in law schools, and I know from experience that grad students in particular often see themselves as competing with others. And of course we know undergrads who view grades as the be-all and would be upset if they thought other students’ grades didn’t represent the same “rate of exchange” for effort as their own. But I just don’t see the end point of evaluation or the learning process in terms of grades, and so I really don’t see any problem with students wanting more time, extensions, etc. There are some accommodations which I agree with Macfarlane might be beyond “reasonable” — I’ve never encountered that situation, but if for instance somebody said I had to like make a duplicate version of all course materials in some different modality, say record myself reading my syllabus and other readings, I’d probably resist. And I think there are decent technological solutions for things like that. But otherwise: okay!

The only real backstop I put on this, and it’s one I don’t see discussed explicitly, is that the student does have to do the work. I think once, maybe twice, I’ve had a student essentially not turn in coursework, hand in a note from some healthcare provider about their mental health, and bristle at the end of the semester when I insist they can’t pass the class without making up the work. Even in the case where the student has had a difficult semester and just couldn’t do the work, and even if I let them make it up, I know that they won’t have gotten much out of the class because the process and progression of assignments is the class; the work is secondary. But I’ll pass them if they do the work. What I cannot consider is having a student sign up for a class, not do the work, claim exemption because of personal medical difficulties, and request a passing grade anyway. I do think there’s a point at which medical (whether physical, mental, or both) difficulties go beyond what can be reasonably accommodated, where the reality is in no reasonable sense should the student be in a college class at the moment. It’s rare, but obviously it does happen. Have I given out some undeserved passing grades? Yes. Have some students taken advantage of the well intentioned spirit of accommodation without probably needing it? I’d be foolish to think not. But it doesn’t seem relevant to me. Students get out of the course what they put in. My job is to motivate them to put more in, not punish them if they don’t. And certainly not to hold some imaginary line on grades or deadlines if they seem distressed.