<p>without commenting on this direct case (since I don’t have the time to look at the details) you have to remember that universities are in many ways like big corporations then like we would wish them to be, places there to nurture young people into adulthood and such. Most schools of any size are huge bureaucracies and as such may not always work like you think they do. </p>
<p>Among other things, schools and colleges are marketing organizations, promoting an image (such as Rice being full of the “The Happiest students”) and they spend a lot of time building that brand…and it could be (and again, I am using hypotheticals here) that things like sexual assault and mental health services were designed to ‘protect the brand’, where the basic answer is if a kid is problematic, get them out of there, it would it ‘protecting the brand’. In some ways, it is no different then a corporation that has defect problems like Toyota did and hid them, rather then deal with them, or otherwise try to cover up problems or issues. Again, let me re-iterate, I am not commenting on the Rice case or whether it is true or not, what I am saying is why such a thing may go on. Hopefully the negative PR will cause the school to evaluate their programs and see if things need changing, that is never an unhealthy thing, to look and see if there is any validity in what she and the other comments said, if there is room for improvement, and if there is, actually do something about it.</p>
<p>And yes, federal law is involved, mental health issues are covered in various civil rights laws on discrimination plus under ADA from what I understand. A good friend of mine was in law school at a prestigious school and has severe health issues that can flare up, a kind of arthritis-like disease that can flare up or where the meds can cause serious side effects. She ran into that and was having trouble with classes, had to withdraw from some, and under the law would be considered disabled, yet the school in effect tried to do what is alleged here, to pressure her to leave the program and so forth. My friend is no dummy and through a family friend got in touch with a lawyer specializing in these kinds of cases (and mind you, this is a top law school, one with a reputation for fighting for the kinds of rights laws we are talking about) and the school’s dean and bureacracy had to back down, because as the lawyer pointed out, it would look crappy for a law school to be found in violation of state and federal statutes they helped in many cases advocate for and write…bureacracies and institutions love order, they love projecting a harmonious image, and things like reported here would gybe with that.</p>