Protest - May 4 - 11 AM - "THE BEACH" AT HOMEWOOD CAMPUS
Protest Route
Show Sol
Stand with us to demand that Johns Hopkins University take action to protect the rights of disabled students
WHAT WE WANT
Response from Provost
OUR STORIES
Why we're marching
A Disability Rights Protest will take place Wednesday, May 4th 11am at “The Beach” at Johns Hopkins University. We will walk to Garland Hall and ask JHU leaders to meet our demands. We feel Hopkins behavior calls into question their role as a leader during the pandemic, and as a global leader in medicine, research, and education
We’re protesting because five disabled students were dismissed from the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program due to disability (ableist) discrimination. The School of Education denied accommodations that Hopkins’ Student Disability Services had approved for four of the five disabled students. Individual professors penalized these students for using approved accommodations, docking their grades, giving them zeroes, misusing a form of academic probation to sanction them, and deliberately subjecting them to harsher treatment than their non-disabled peers received.
Hopkins professors are free to deny use disability accommodations the school has approved for us. They treat us, even disabled graduate students, as if we're children, not adults. If professors mistreat us, our departments blame us for the abuse. If professors, SDS, or our departments fail to provide accommodations Hopkins has approved for us, and we fall behind, instead of protecting us, Hopkins places us on academic probation, forcing us to repeat classes, losing time and money. Sometimes, Hopkins even dismisses us, or threatens to, based on our performances in courses where we were denied accommodations we had a right to under Federal law.
Some professors and administrators regard disability accommodations as wrong, and they take it out on us. This must end.
The counseling students also faced inappropriate gatekeeping, lack of empathy, mental illness discrimination, and racism—four of the five dismissed students are people of color. (See the articles in the JHU News-Letter, and Inside Higher Education.)
The five disabled counseling students are coming forward in varying degrees to tell their stories. One such student, Katie, who is helping lead this protest, was placed on a candidate improvement plan (CIP) that banned her from using the disability accommodations Hopkins approved for her. When she tried to use them, she was penalized. Her professor would not allow her to follow COVID guidelines that allowed other students to extend deadlines, and that kept them from counseling COVID+ patients in-person. Forced to counsel COVID+ patients in person, at danger to herself and immune-compromised relatives, she still completed her internship with the highest marks, but her professor would not accept the internship coordinator’s grade, instead giving Katie an F. The other five students have similar stories of unequal treatment, their professors denying them disability accommodations that Hopkins had approved for them, their professors retaliating when they tried to use their accommodations, and their professors engaging in unequal grading practices that deliberately penalize disabled students.
Hopkins allows professors and departments to deny disabled individuals accommodations has approved. It permits unequal treatment, and in doing so has allowed a department to ignore Hopkins’ own covid safety protocols. We feel the school’s behavior calls into question its role as a global health leader during the pandemic.
Furthermore, the dismissed students’ disabilities involved mental illnesses, among them PTSD, ADHD, and trauma from sexual abuse. If Hopkins’ counseling program discriminates against the very people it’s supposed to help, and hypocritically cannot follow its own rules on covid safety, we feel the school’s behavior calls into question Hopkins’ role as a global leader in research and medicine.
But instead of investigating these disturbing allegations, Hopkins’ School of Education deans wrote a dismissive, callous letter to the editor denying everything. We call into question Hopkins’ findings that no ableism was present; OIE didn’t even contact one student’s witnesses. Medicine, education, and research require fairness and compassion. Hopkins has shown neither toward its disabled students. Many of us have not found Student Disability Services to be an ally; OIE investigations take months and rarely find in favor of disabled students, so we really have no place to turn.
Enough is enough. Disabled students, faculty, and allies have come together to create a list of demands.
Life as a Disabled Student at Hopkins
April 26, 2022 - Inside Higher Ed. on the 5 Dismissed Johns Hopkins Counseling Students
Video clip of a Hopkins professor bullying a disabled student over Zoom during the pandemic. Bullying starts around the 5min mark.
The Johns Hopkins News-Letter has published articles on what we face.
Sept 2020 - Johns Hopkins News-Letter
Students are left to fend for themselves when disability is not valued at Hopkins.
Oct 2021 - Johns Hopkins News-Letter
Disability isnt taken seriously at Hopkins
Oct 2021 - Johns Hopkins News-Letter
Students with disabilities report exclusion and discrimination on campus
Oct 2022 - Johns Hopkins News-Letter
Students with disabilities deserve more from Hopkins.
Sept 2021 - Johns Hopkins News-Letter
Hopkins wont accept responsibility when it fails disabled students
Nov 2021 - Johns Hopkins News-Letter
Hopkins doesnt care about the safety and privacy of disabled students
March 2022 - Johns Hopkins News-Letter
Students claim discrimination let to their dismissal from School of Education clinical mental health counseling program
Some Research on Disability
Hopkins won't release the graduation rates of disabled students, but by law it must release the graduation rates of servicemembers and veterans, but one-third of veterans are disabled. If the veteran retention rates of 75% for full-time students and 50% for part-time at Hopkins have any correlation to the graduation rates of disabled students, Hopkins is seriously underserving both disabled students and veterans. Hopkins Retention Rates of Veterans.
2022 Students with Disabilities At Maryland Colleges And Universities. Public colleges and universities in Maryland release graduation rates for disabled students. Maryland public higher education reports a gap of 8.5% between disabled and non-disabled student (p3). Hopkins must release it's numbers, overall, and for each of the 9 schools.