Girl sues to take pet ferret to classes

The BBQ Pit
141

No shit, dumbass. That’s what I just said.

Nor do you tell a disabled person with a service animal that they are not able to attend class, nor give the teacher or classmates a say. They do not HAVE a say in whether or not someone can bring a service animal to class. If someone has a severe enough allergy, then they can find other accomodations for THEM, or fit the first person into a class that doesn’t have anyone with allergies. But you cannot bar someone from a public area because they have a service animal.

Because you brought up service animals when you started talking about people being allergic to dogs, dipshit.

Um, yes, yes they are. A mental disability can be just as, if not more, debillitating as a physical one. People with anxiety disorders aren’t just “calmed”, they need to find ways to function normally. And if you had bothered to read the whole thread, you would have noted the posts stating cases of service animals being provided for those with mental disabilities.

142

I think critecus was thinking that you meant a service dog that was trained to behave in public, but essentially served the same function as her ferret currently does – passively calming her with its mere, untrained presence. (ie; a dog trained to assist the blind.)

I agree with you, this woman could benefit from a real service dog, trained specifically to aid her with her panic disorder and PTSD. This can include the same sort of tactile interaction that the woman currently gets from the ferret, but with an actual service animal, this is trained and dedicated behavior, initiated by a specific stimulus and consistently and reliably provided. Psychiatric service dogs are additionally trained to assist their owner in keeping schedules, from daily routines to medication delivery and reminders. They can also be trained in blocking behaviours to keep their owners from being stressfully crowded in public places, and a plethora of other extremely helpful tasks.

As it stands, her ferret is little better than a fetish object, and is unreasonably obtrusive in the situations she wants to put it in.

If she were to acquire a real service animal, the benefit would be much greater than could be expected from retaining her pet – and there would be absolutely no controversy over her keeping it in her dorm or bringing it to classes. Instead she’s making a federal case out of an unsupportable position, creating needless stress in her environment, and generally being a pain in the ass. Minimal benefit to her, maximum annoyance to everyone she has to deal with. Brilliant.

143

It is in south central Texas; a region of the United States which has a symbiotic relationship with artifical climate controls. The inopportune failure of A/C signifies the end of class. Even though OLLU is indeed a Catholic institution, I doubt they would make people suffer through the rest of the day in a brick oven.

144

Assuming that a large part of a University’s mission is to prepare students for the real world, allowing her pet ferret would not serve her well at all.

Try to think of even one job where one could carry around a ferret in the workplace. A petshop, or veternarian, and then only maybe. She’s got to find another way to deal, for her own good, and the good of everybody else around her.

145

:smack:

The thing is, the ADA only requires organizations to make reasonable accomodations for disabled persons. So even if this were actually a service animal (which it’s abundantly clear it ain’t), the school would only be required to allow her to bring it to class provided it wasn’t disruptive to the other students and further provided that they had no other alternative available to accomodate her special needs. Small chance of non-disruption with a ferret in class scenario. Service dogs (and other animals) are trained rigorously - and part of their training is not to be disruptive. Causing a disruption for the entire class for the sake of a single student is not reasonable. In cases where the disruption is tied to the physical presence of the student (as in cases of Tourette’s, for example), the school could well choose to accomodate by providing the student with video tapes of the lecture and a pass from the professor that allows the student not to attend class in favor of watching said tapes. Or have a streaming-video setup for the student. My law school had a streaming video setup for just such a reason. We had a student who was unable due to disability to attend lectures without causing disruption, so the school just set up streaming video, informed the professors of the situation, and had the student attend virtually. If the student hadn’t liked that option (in fact, he suggested it and the school agreed), that would have been too damn bad. The school was approached by a student with a disability, made provisions to accomodate the disability reasonably, and the student declined the provisions - no bad on the part of the school.

The long and short of it is that as long as an accomodation offered is a reasonable one, you don’t really get to pick it out yourself. You can offer your own alternatives, but the school is under no compulsion to choose one you offer. Nowhere does the ADA state that the disabled person is the one who gets to decide what accomodation they’re getting. As long as they come up with a reasonable accomodation, the school they can tell her (or anyone) to take it or leave it. Schools do not even* have * to allow service animals, provided they are willing to offer an alternative. See above mention of taped lectures available to a student. (This would of course not apply to a laboratory science kind of class - but this girl doesn’t sound like she’s involved in a hard science curricula that requires lab work.)

The school cannot be required to allow her to have it in the dorms (and shouldn’t - for lots of reasons). This is because she has options for housing other than university housing and, frankly, the school is not obligated to provide any student with a place to live. True, most schools do, as a convenience to their student body, but it’s not an inalienable right for college students to live in student housing. Ask any of the students at my alma mater who were not granted student housing and had to find off-campus accomodations or choose another institute of higher education.

If she cannot get through the educational experience without access to her ferret, then she is free to live off campus and have the fuzzy there. Or live at home and attend as a commuter (if not to that specific school, then to one within commuting distance - again, nobody has the right to attend any specific university - hell nobody has the right to attend university at all). If she requires a service animal to get through her day, then by all means she should rush out and get an actual service animal. My sympathies to all sufferers of her conditions, but she’s being unreasonable and the whole situation smacks of drama queen.

As to the reasons why the school is totally reasonable in prohibiting animals in the dorms (regardless of whether or not people have actually had animals in the dorm without causing trouble), some of them are as follows (and previously mentioned):

  1. Damage. Even well-trained animals can and do damage property. It only takes one bathroom “accident” for example to pretty well ruin a carpet. Many smaller pets (ferrets, rodents, etc) are notorious for chewing.

  2. Aroma. No matter how scrupulous you are about cleaning up after your beloved pet, there’s going to be some with mammalian pets. This aroma can be and often is bothersome to those nearby.

  3. Speaking of those nearby, a dorm is a communal living situation. There are likely to be *several hundred * other people sharing your space with you. All of whom are entitled to have their disabilities accomodated - including severe allergies, phobias, anxiety disorders centered around pets, etc. My dearest friend has severe allergies to pet dander - if it’s furry, it’ll make her hive up like a honey farm and leaves her gasping for every breath. Why is ferret-girl’s inability to stand college without her ferret more important than my friend (for example)'s inability to breathe around her ferret?

  4. Slippery slope. No matter what people think (and I find it exceptionally disingenous for people to assert that there won’t be a problem with “Well Jane got to have her ferret, my disorder will be soothed by my cat! I have a note from my doctor and everything!”), once you allow one resident to have an animal in the dorms, you’ll wind up with lots of animals in the dorm. Many schools do not allow even recognized service animals to live in dorms. They freely allow them on campus, but not living in the dorms. They are generally willing to bend over backwards to find suitable housing to accomodate students that require service animals, though. All three of the colleges I attended had arrangements for persons requiring service animals that did not include living on campus. The accomodations were generally comparable to the dorms, just as close to campus as some of the student housing, and generally equivalent in all ways. They also arranged for student financial aid to cover as much of the housing as it would have covered for a student living on campus.

Basically, disabled or not, this girl is unreasonable. Her case has no merit. She’s wasting the time, energy and resources of all parties involved. Including her own.

146

Rape is the most common, at least in women. I’ve known lots of people with PTSD at age 19.

Not addressing the rest of this post, there being no point.

147

C’mon. Boo was a (miniature giant space) hamster, usually Mesocricetus auratus as a pet. Ferrets are Mustela Putorius Furo.

148

Ferret odor can be controlled with effort. Frequent brushing, deodorizing / conditioning spray, and frequent bedding changes will keep the scent down. A strong air filter will help with the dander. I’ve had both boys and girls, mixed and separately. I haven’t noticed a difference in stench…I mean scent :wink: . My olfactory senses may be used to them though.

Skunks, weasels, wolverines, minks, badgers, and otters are not and, to the best of my knowledge, have never been domesticated. Wolverines and minks are particularly ornery. Polecats (wild ferrets), however, have been domesticated at least as long as cats, dating back to ancient Egypt (they appear in the hieroglyphic records). There are no wild polecats native to the US (the endangered black-footed ferret is a misnamed distant cousin). Ferrets released into the wild or who have escaped have never been known to create a feral colony. Ferrets in the US, are most certainly domesticated animals.

149

Oh yeah, Uncle Boo. I wonder how he’s doing.

150

My whole comment about polling the class is presuming the animal is NOT a service animal, which the ferret is not.

151

I see I was wrong about the rabies vaccine. Thanks for the update. I swear it feels like a few months ago they were euthanizing some poor girl’s pet to test for rabies because there was no approved vaccine. 15 years in the blink of an eye.

Thanks for fighting ignorance, especially mine.

152

Oh, they still euthanize pets to test for rabies.

153

No one said it was. We were saying IF she did have a guide dog, there would be no “polling the class”, because a guide dog is covered.

154

So, because my hypothetical solution wouldn’t apply to a completely different scenario, you call me names. Nice.

155

Well, this is the Pit.
Uh… stupid.

156

You know what’s really sick? Helen Keller always had wet, yellow socks…because her pet ferret was blind too!

But seriously, if my comfort animal happened to be a tarantula, could I bring it to class?

157

Because in your first situation, you mentioned students being allergic to DOGS as a reason not to allow guide dogs in.

158

I said I wondered what they did. Strangely enough, your wild ass guessing and insults didn’t satisfy my curiosity.

159

Someone upthread was wondering how such a young person might come to suffer from PTSD.

I think that mystery’s been solved.

160

That was my question, and to your response, I say: hee.

To everyone else’s: I stand corrected about PTSD.