Professor Tries To Dismiss Student With Visual Impairment

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    Text - Professor tries to dismiss a student for her visual impairment. Student makes sure Professor see's the door TLDR: Associate-Professor tries to discriminate against my visually impaired friend, putting the college at risk of a lawsuit. Friend secretly records the Professor's illegal behavior, submits it to the college, and gets Professor barred from the field for life.
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    Text - This story was told to me by a close friend of mine named Rebecca, shortly after our fourth year of college. Rebecca was a very hard-working student who took her education very seriously, with aspirations for medical school. Paired with the fact that we both attended one of the top schools in the country, school life was difficult at best and downright hellish at worst. All this said, Rebecca also had a condition called Achromatopsia which impacted her vision severely, making it painful f
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    Text - to only within a few feet away, and left her with complete color blindness. Despite all of this she was a stellar student, averaging an almost 4.0 GPA due to her amazing attitude and insane work ethic. In general Professors at our school were very accommodating, as our school has an accessibility mandate they were legally required to enforce, ensuring that students with varying disabilities were adequately accommodated. Failing to do so, can result in legal action against the school if th
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    Text - Now in our second last semester, Rebecca had 5 courses left (4 of which were bird courses), but the 5th being known to be exceedingly difficult (vertebrate endocrinology I think?). Needless to say, she took the course as it was a pre-requisite for her specialization. All was well until she showed up to the first lecture. In previous years, the class was taught by our fantastic department head who'd retired as of that year. Instead this years class was taught by a young 30's something Asso
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    Text - up to give her accommodations, which consisted of printed lecture slides in size 30 point font, high contrast diagrams for viewing, and an audio recording of the lecture (which she has her own personal recorder for). All other professors had problems with this and were always willing to accommodate. Associate-Professor however had an ego of sorts, believing that the research they were working on something of "cutting edge" in their field, and denied Rebecca's accommodation
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    Text - certificate, stating that providing copies of the lecture to her could open her research to academic theft. She pressed, and told her flat out there was no risk of that as she would sign an NDA or anything if needed, but the Associate- Professor doubled down and told her no. Rebecca thought maybe the Associate-Professor was unaware of how this worked, so she left and came back during office hours with a copy of the accessibility guidelines and her accessibility certificate to show them th
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    Text - device she uses for note-taking, to ensure if there was further disagreement, she had more evidence than he-said-she-said. Her intuition was spot-on, as the Professor lost her shit and told her that "unlike you, I can and have read the guidelines" and went on to tell her if in 4th year, if she couldn't keep up with the material without requiring special exceptions, she didn't belong in her class or at this "prestigious institution"
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    Text - Rebecca held her composure and informed them again of the accommodations she was requesting, her ability to sign an NDA if she so chose, and that "if they had read the guidelines, they'd understand that what they are doing is illegal and could leave the college at legal liability" The Associate-Professor sputtered "If you threaten me again, I'll have you expelled from this school" So Rebecca apologized and left straight to the accessibility office to lodge a complaint. She sat down her wi
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    Text - her advisor. She also mentioned that the events had caused her severe duress and she was considering legal action against the school if immediate action was not implemented to remove the barriers to her equitable education The counselor immediately brought this up to the Dean, who brought this to the Vice-Provost, who assembled a tribunal and informed the Associate-Professor they had received a complaint by a student, regarding discrimination within the classroom.
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    Text - Tribunal took place at the end of the week, with the Dean, Professors New Department Head, Vice-Provost Chair, and other members at large representing the panel. Rebecca was sitting in the room during the hearing, quietly while the Associate-Professor went up to the chair. Associate-Professor immediately started to lie, and tried to spin it that Rebecca was asking for sample midterms and finals because she was struggling with the first weeks content. Needless to say, the Panel didn't even
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    Text - as they had not been given prior consent before the recording had occurred. The Chair told them that "1. If you had read the law, you'd know that is not how it works here" and "2. If that is your only defence, the college is firing you for malicious breach of contract, openly admitting to leaving the college open to a human rights lawsuit, and abusing their position of authority to bully/intimidate a student". Given our schools reputation, getting fired is lethal to a budding researchers
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    Text - Associate-Professor screamed and started swearing at the panel, Rebecca, and anyone else in the room before security escorted her to her office. That was the last time she was allowed in the office of this college, or any other as far as I'm aware. As for Rebecca? Well since the class had just lost their professor, they'd gotten one of the more senior Professors to take on the class for the rest of the semester, and Rebecca did swimmingly. As of date, she's finishing her residency as a de

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