Accommodated students abusing their status

[hamburger]

Hi, I have accommodated students before. I had no problem with them. This semester, I have two accommodated students who disrespected me and other students. They caused a scene in the class and demanded to be the center of attention due to their status. They keep skipping classes and do not hand in assignments. I accommodated their requests but now they complained to the department head against me for not accommodating them. In the meeting with the head and another colleague who is like somebody working at the customer services centre, there was an idea that it could be a conflict in personality and these two students might not feel comfortable to go to my class anymore. As a result, they cannot submit their assignments. So, it is my fault when students don't go to class nor do their homework? Students can just say they don't feel comfortable going to class and they can get away with not submitting assignments? Do I have to give them 100% to end the case? I estimated that close to 20 hours have been spent on writing reports and discussing with colleagues about these two students. It is not the end yet. 

Each semester, I just spend lots of time and energy to deal with entitled students and get tired. I could have spent the time to look for another job. I talked with several colleagues. They just told me that each semester, students complain all sorts of things. They put all the blames about their poor performance on professors. Students also told me that it is easier to get higher scores by complaining rather than studying.

[downer]

I have worked at quite a few schools and I never experienced anything like this.

I would not put up with it.

[rhetoricae]

What documentation of accommodations did those students provide? What is on file at whatever office manages disability accommodations?  (And was this "colleague who is like somebody working at the customer services centre" a Student Services or Office of Disability/Accessibility representative?)

If their approved/on file accommodations allow for skipping class and turning things in whenever they feel like it (which I very much doubt), then that's an issue. I have never seen such accommodations; even for students who have an accommodation related to attendance, there have been clear parameters & expectations that said student will be keeping up with the work.

I'll note that you have, pretty consistently, made statements here which seem to indicate that you doubt students' accommodations/actual disability. If this attitude has colored your interactions with students who do have documented accommodations, then I can see how that would be a real problem for your administrator (and for these students). I can't tell if you are connecting their choice to disrupt class with their  accommodation or not, but it might be worth considering whether this is happening and if it's impacting how you interact with students.

[hamburger]

What documentation of accommodations did those students provide? What is on file at whatever office manages disability accommodations?  (And was this "colleague who is like somebody working at the customer services centre" a Student Services or Office of Disability/Accessibility representative?)

If their approved/on file accommodations allow for skipping class and turning things in whenever they feel like it (which I very much doubt), then that's an issue. I have never seen such accommodations; even for students who have an accommodation related to attendance, there have been clear parameters & expectations that said student will be keeping up with the work.

I'll note that you have, pretty consistently, made statements here which seem to indicate that you doubt students' accommodations/actual disability. If this attitude has colored your interactions with students who do have documented accommodations, then I can see how that would be a real problem for your administrator (and for these students). I can't tell if you are connecting their choice to disrupt class with their  accommodation or not, but it might be worth considering whether this is happening and if it's impacting how you interact with students.

For each such student, professors only get a letter stating the exceptions we need to give. We are supposed to just follow the letters, no question asked. Typical exceptions for such students include turning things in late with prior discussion with the professors. I have been told by administrators that all students have the right to attend class or not. I have no right to make them to come nor penalize them for not coming. Even the counsellor in charge of these two students does not want to deal with them. Yes, the colleague who is like somebody working at the CSC is an Advisor for students in my department. I can see Academic Integrity issue here. Allowing them to turn things in late means that professors allow them to know the correct answers before submission of assignments. Allowing them to take the test late means giving them time to ask their classmates the test questions unless I have to waste my time to create another test paper for them.

[writingprof]

I have been told by administrators that all students have the right to attend class or not. I have no right to make them to come nor penalize them for not coming.

This is absurd. You should find a new position.

However, it is also unsustainable. You should do what you're told and quietly wait for the responsible administrator to leave, as he or she inevitably will.

[rhetoricae]

For each such student, professors only get a letter stating the exceptions we need to give. We are supposed to just follow the letters, no question asked. Typical exceptions for such students include turning things in late with prior discussion with the professors. I have been told by administrators that all students have the right to attend class or not. I have no right to make them to come nor penalize them for not coming. Even the counsellor in charge of these two students does not want to deal with them. Yes, the colleague who is like somebody working at the CSC is an Advisor for students in my department. I can see Academic Integrity issue here. Allowing them to turn things in late means that professors allow them to know the correct answers before submission of assignments. Allowing them to take the test late means giving them time to ask their classmates the test questions unless I have to waste my time to create another test paper for them.

Right - that all sounds pretty standard. "No questions asked" likely means something more along the lines of "you can't make a student disclose their specific disability" than it does "don't have a conversation with the student about how you will implement the accommodation."  In the case of "turning things in late with prior discussion with professor" - did they have a discussion with you about whether & when they were required to submit the work? If not, then they don't get to turn it in late. That's right there in the description.

Students do have the right to attend class or not. Students also have the right to fail. What students do not have is a right to pass the course without submitting work or demonstrating knowledge/ability of the material. It seems to me that you may be hearing "students have the right not to attend class" as "students can come and go as they please without consequence," but that's not what that means.  (And by the way - you teach at the college level. You can't make students come to class. That's just not a thing, because you don't have total control over other adult humans.)

Lastly, there's a difference between "advisor," "customer service person," and "representative from Office of Disabilities."  If, as an academic advisor, I heard you refer to me as essentially a customer service rep, I'd be pretty offended, because that's not my job and your description sounds dismissive. If the person is from the Office of Disabilities, that's great because you can ask them directly to explain how an accommodation might or is meant to be carried out.

[hamburger]

I have been told by administrators that all students have the right to attend class or not. I have no right to make them to come nor penalize them for not coming.

This is absurd. You should find a new position.

However, it is also unsustainable. You should do what you're told and quietly wait for the responsible administrator to leave, as he or she inevitably will.

I heard a reason is that some students have to work or have other family commitments. So, professors have no right to make them to come or penalize them.

When I talked about students making all sorts of requests for exceptions, that colleague just told me to bend the rules to give the students more time to adjust their life!

[Second Chance]

I taught a very big lecture class that was also a requirement for some programs, so each time, there was always a sizable number of students that had approvals for special accomodations. Not infrequently, i'd end up spending nearly half my student time on about 5 percent of the students- but i did that fine and tried to help as much as I could. Most of it was standard things they got approved for- time and a half on exams (this was always a logistic nightmare as class lecture halls had back to back classes with the next class clamoring to get in), a quieter less crowded place for exams (usually TAs had to work to get free rooms for them) - thinks like that. Over the years, requests got a bit stranger and there were more abuses, and more students in that accomodation ) but only twice did I go ballistic.

One of those was an accomodation where they were going to send in a professional recorder, then lecture would be professional transcribed, and the student would get a pdf of the lecture word for word (in text, not image format) that they could have for the whole semester. For every lecture. They were hoping even to get them from me in advance (I forget the details now). Anyway, i refused, and it was clear I was about to get in big trouble for refusing. I was writing a book based on my lectures, much of which was original material, and having a student with those pdfs could have been catastrophic, even if they agreed to sign an NDA. I could just see them distributing it to their friends, and then later put it on the internet.

I could see i was getting nowhere and they knew that their ace card was accusing profs of being discriminary to special needs students- even when not true and despite years worth of excellent accomodations. So what i did was basically pretend to agree to it - but made it super hard and effortful on the part of the student to actually do it. i picked things that had nothing to do with their needed accomodations, but required things like theyd have to get up at a time that did not suit them and come to my office. About 4 days after my hoops, i was informed by the accomodation people that the student decided she wanted to take a different section and dropped my class. Whew.

(one other general thing is that in our university there was a special accomodation program that only rich kids could afford since it cost money somehow. these were usually the students whose official approvals said they needed accomodations because they had a learning disability. but somehow, it took money to get this official thing which gave them the right for special accomodations. that used to really piss me off since i was an advocate for the poor and hated these rich-only special treatments - not to mention the issue of saying that a disability to college is having an iQ of 70 which hey isn't the studetns fault so you have to accomodate and find a way for them to pass the classes).

[Hegemony]

OP, you are not very clear in your explanation of what happened, so it's hard to comment. 

Submitting things late means that you should create a separate test for them, so seeing other students' answers does not give them an advantage.  I know, you "shouldn't have to do extra work," but it is what it is, so just give them some prior version of the test.

Skipping classes — no big deal.  There are plenty of defensible reasons for this.  You sound as if it's an outrageous request.  Again, it is what it is.  They may be allowed to hand in assignments late — again, no big deal.  In my experience, they will not be allowed to hand them in after the course has finished.  So let them hand them in whenever, and the chances are good that they won't hand them in at all (Been There Experienced That), so you have been saved from having to deal with them. 

"They caused a scene in the class and demanded to be the center of attention due to their status."  You do not give the specifics of this, so as I say, it's hard to respond.  Clearly you feel they were in the wrong.  But your fuzziness about the details, and your grudging attitude toward them, makes me wonder if your attitude isn't coloring your assessment.  And: there are some students who can be a bit disruptive.  It is your job to handle them calmly and to de-escalate the situation, even if you shouldn't have to deal with it.  So I would guess that what went on here is complicated.

"Students can just say they don't feel comfortable going to class and they can get away with not submitting assignments?"  Yes, they can say they don't feel comfortable going to class.  Students with massive anxiety have genuine obstacles. If you'd ever had a student have a panic attack in your class, you would know how real their experience is.  And as for the not submitting assignments, my guess is that the requirement is that they have to be submitted at some point, is it not?  Just not on the regular timeline.  So wait it out.  There has to be assessment of the course.  Our accommodations requirements say that the course has to accommodate the student, but should not be less rigorous in intellectual content than it is for the other students.  So loosen up about deadlines and attendance, and let the students do what they can.  Then assess that when it comes in.

[newprofwife]

Students like this know how to work the system and so do their parents. Just think of the admissions scandal and all the parents who had fake accommodations for their students and the students had fake disabilities.

I'd be very careful with these students as they may have been manipulating the system for years. The worst case scenario is that one of these students ends up being violent and again, their disability/mental health status protects them since they are a protected again.

I think that in these cases, you have to give up on your own values and do whatever the admin wants-if that means giving them As even if they are failing.     

[sprout]

It's not your job as professor to decide if a student needs an accommodation or if they're working the system.  If the disabilities office says they get an accommodation, they get an accommodation.  That decision is made above your paygrade.  If you feel the accommodation is  unreasonable, you talk to the disabilities office and explain why you feel it is unreasonable and they should be willing to work with you to find an acceptable alternative, as long as your definition of "unreasonable" sounds more like "this conflicts with the intended outcomes of the course" than "this is inconvenient".  If students are abusing the official accommodation by using it as an excuse to blow off the class, this concern should be shared with both your dean and the disabilities office.

[Hegemony]

I agree.  Don't second-guess the accommodations office.  They are professionals and they have a lot of information you don't.  Students aren't required to be nice to be given accommodations, and just because a student is disagreeable doesn't mean they don't qualify for accommodations. 

I'll say that my son has several "invisible" disabilities — disabilities that are well-documented by multiple professionals — and it has been a nightmare getting some of his teachers to provide the accommodations, because some teachers believe that because the disabilities are not visible to them, it's all nonsense and they get to deny him his legally mandated accommodations.  It is so exhausting fighting this battle over and over again. In sum, do what you are supposed to do, and do the accommodations as directed, regardless of whether you like or approve of the students.

[dr_codex]

King Lear was his own kind of special needs individual, but he was right about this:

Here's three on's are sophisticated; thou art the thing itself. Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.

[Caracal]

I heard a reason is that some students have to work or have other family commitments. So, professors have no right to make them to come or penalize them.

When I talked about students making all sorts of requests for exceptions, that colleague just told me to bend the rules to give the students more time to adjust their life!

The attendance bit seems fairly crazy if that is really what they are saying. You should recognize that students have complicated lives. You do that by building in some flexibility in your classes. This is why many of us have policies such as:

You can have x number of absences without a penalty to your grade
You can drop the lowest lab grade
A designated make up  exam at the end of the semester, or counting the last exam double or something

Policies like these recognize that stuff does happen during the semester. Students still need to come to class and do their work, but it isn't a disaster when something goes wrong at the wrong time. Beyond that, I'm always willing to try to help when a student is dealing with a real problem as long as they are trying to manage things and staying in touch. If your reporting is accurate, some of this goes beyond what you can manage. I could certainly consider the circumstances for a student who had missed a quarter of classes because of an anxiety disorder that flared up at times, but did the work and stayed in touch. However, if you are actually unable to ever come to class, I can't do much with that. At that point, you should get a medical withdrawal and work on your health.

[Aster]

Don't second-guess the accommodations office.  They are professionals and they have a lot of information you don't. 

I can and do often second-guess the accommodations office. So do most professors at Big Urban College. In most cases we are fixing errors made by the accommodations office. My experience is that while accommodations staffers are employed by the university, they may be nothing more than compliance officers with little/no actual training in mental or physical health, little/no training in education, and live within a bureaucratic bubble. They tick checkboxes from a list of pre-set checkboxes delivered to them from someone else.

Good universities have proper shared governance channels that allow professors to engage in meaningful dialogues with disabilities offices. This results in a mutually beneficial relationship for optimizing student accommodations for both individual students and for individual courses and professors. If the disabilities office actually has trained counselors or health professionals directly working with it, that's a big +1. I have worked at two universities that did this right. One was an R1, and the other was an R2.

Bad universities have robotic check-box clerks (often understaffed) that spam out generic accommodation letter demands and either don't respond to your queries or become belligerent and threatening if you question their spam letter demands or offer alternatives. My current university (an open enrollment institution) is one of these. Our professors are frequently wasting our energies trying to "accommodate the accommodations" that don't even apply to our courses, cannot actually apply to our courses, or involve special requirements that the accommodation office itself refuses to provide. And while it is true that disabilities offices possess more information about student issues than is (now) released to professors, whether or not the office actually does something intelligent or appropriate with that information is not something to be assumed.

I am not advocating that professors disregard accommodation letters. There are government protections and services that students with documented conditions are eligible to ask for and receive at Higher Ed institutions. I am advocating that if you're a professional educator and you're given an accommodation letter that looks problematic to you, that you have the right to bring up your concerns with your disabilities office,and that that office takes steps to hear you out, fix things that might be messed up, explain things better to you, and don't just send you back a nastygram that's also CC'd to your dean.