#academic accommodations

Ableism is my professor giving the whole class my academic accommodations in the name of "fairness"

No you ableist fuck

All you did was give them an advantage!

I need extra time on tests! The abled folks don't!

Equality doesn't equal equity my guy

Im so fucking mad

By: Rob Henderson

Published: Feb 6, 2026

This week, the Stanford junior Elsa Johnson revealed in The Times that many of her fellow students were claiming they were disabled to receive accommodations like extra time on tests, excused absences and the best housing on campus. Johnson admitted that she had used her own endometriosis diagnosis to secure housing and academic perks.

“The truth is, the system is there to be gamed,” she wrote, “and most students feel that if you are not gaming it, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage.”

The result? We are gradually teaching young people corruption under the guise of compassion.

Just look at the numbers. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 18 per cent of male and 22 per cent of female college undergraduates report having a disability. Among non-binary students the figure jumps to 54 per cent. The figures are especially striking at elite universities.

Writing in The Atlantic, Rose Horowitch reported that more than 20 per cent of undergrads at Brown University and Harvard University were registered as disabled. At Amherst College the figure exceeded 30 per cent. At Stanford it approached 40 per cent. The rise is sharpest at the most selective schools, with only 3 to 4 per cent of students receiving accommodations at community colleges.

In her piece, Johnson argued that anyone who did not cheat was putting themselves at a disadvantage. “Stanford has made gaming the system the logical choice,” she wrote. “The students are not exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them?” Yes, you can.

Something has shifted about American attitudes towards rules, especially among members of Gen Z. A 2020 survey from the American Enterprise Institute found that relative to older adults, young people are less likely to agree with the statement: “It is more important to always follow the rules even if it means you may be less successful.” At the same time, young people are more likely to say it is acceptable to get ahead even if it requires bending or breaking the rules. The trend points towards a lower-trust society, where rules are seen less as shared guardrails and more as inconvenient obstacles to work around.

The Atlantic reported that some elite schools may soon have more students receiving disability accommodations than those who don’t. A decade ago this would have sounded absurd, but as students and parents have come to recognise the benefits of disability status — extended test time, flexible deadlines, priority housing — the numbers have surged.

Many educated elites have long excused rule-breaking among people in more disadvantaged communities, arguing that the system is stacked against them — so why wouldn’t they try to level the playing field? Now, bizarrely, they are extending that same moral leniency to themselves.

The irony is that students at America’s elite universities are among the most privileged people to have ever lived. Admission alone places them among the future leadership class. Yet once inside the gates their advantage-hunting continues, with many searching for new ways to climb higher.

And today victimhood can function as a strategy. It can open doors, unlock resources and confer moral authority.

A 2021 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology supports this theory, showing that victim status can elevate one’s social standing in modern Western societies, increasing sympathy, expanding influence and justifying claims for material support.

The study showed that people with “dark triad” traits such as narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy were more likely to attempt to acquire resources through victim claims. But beyond the scope of the study, it is also possible that habitually framing oneself as disadvantaged can cultivate narcissism, manipulativeness and disregard for others. Behaviour shapes mindset just as much as mindset shapes behaviour.

As a result America’s elite-education system is vulnerable to exploitation, especially among those who have the knowledge and resources to navigate it. A 2019 investigation found that many affluent parents had paid thousands of dollars for private psychological testing. These clinicians face a built-in incentive: families are customers, and a diagnosis of ADHD or anxiety can deliver academic advantages. A decade ago, as an undergraduate at Yale, I learnt that several students were claiming to be “dyslexic” to successfully skip compulsory language-course requirements. All were from well-off backgrounds.

The system offers perverse incentives that are difficult to resist — unless you are a person of immense character.

Years ago, a friend I served with the US Air Force was injured on the job. His injury was real but temporary. He knew, as many veterans do, that disability claims had been rising — such incentives are not confined to elite college students, but extend to former service members as well. He could easily have applied for long-term benefits upon discharge, but he chose not to. As soon as he recovered, he returned to work. He wanted to put the experience behind him rather than organise his life around it.

He went on to do well. But for hundreds of thousands of others the incentive to exaggerate one’s difficulties is too tempting — especially in a culture that offers excuses and asks: “How can you blame them?”

In the end, this all comes with a hidden cost. Institutions meant to cultivate excellence are training students to find advantage in fragility. And the habits and values learnt on the college campus rarely stay there. Eventually our culture will adopt these values, as we increasingly turn into a society of grift.

[ Via: https://archive.md/PkQNU ]

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By: Elsa Johnson

Published: Feb 2, 2026

In 2023, one month into my freshman year at Stanford University, an upperclassman was showing me her dorm room — a prizedsingle in one of the nicest buildings on campus. As she took me around her space, which included a private bathroom, a walk-in shower and a great view of Hoover Tower, she casually mentioned that she had lived in a single all four years she had attended Stanford.

I was surprised. Most people don’t get the privilege of a single room until they reach their senior year.

That’s when my friend gave me a tip: Stanford had granted her “a disability accommodation”.

She, of course, didn’t have a disability. She knew it. I knew it. But she had figured out early what most Stanford students eventually learn: the Office of Accessible Education will give students a single room, extra time on tests and even exemptions from academic requirements if they qualify as “disabled”.

Everyone was doing it. I could do it, too, if I just knew how to ask.

A recent article in The Atlantic reported that an increasing number of students at elite universities were claiming they had disabilities to get benefits or exemptions, which can also include copies of lecture notes, excused absences and access to private testing rooms. Those who suffer from “social anxiety” can even get out of participating in class discussions.

But the most common disability accommodation students ask for — and receive — is the best housing on campus.

At Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where competition for the best dorm rooms is fierce, this practice is particularly rife. The Atlantic reported that 38 percent of undergraduates at my college were registered as having a disability — that’s 2,850 students out of a class of 7,500 — and 24 per cent of undergrads received academic or housing accommodations in the fall quarter.

At the Ivy League colleges Brown and Harvard, more than 20 per cent of undergrads are registered as disabled. Contrast these numbers with America’s community colleges, where only 3 to 4 per cent of students receive disability accommodations. Bizarrely, the schools that boast the most academically successful students are the ones with the largest number who claim disabilities — disabilities that you’d think would deter academic success.

The truth is, the system is there to be gamed, and most students feel that if you’re not gaming it, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.

That’s why I decided to claim my legitimate illness — endometriosis — as a disability at Stanford.

When I arrived on campus two and a half years ago, I would have assumed that special allowances were made for a small number of students who genuinely needed them. But I quickly discovered that wasn’t true. Some diagnoses are real and serious, of course, such as epilepsy, anaphylactic allergies, sleep apnea or severe physical disabilities.

But most students, in my experience, claim less severe ailments, such as ADHD or anxiety. And some “disabilities” are just downright silly.Students claim “night terrors”; others say they “get easily distracted” or they “can’t live with others”. I know a guy who was granted a single room because he needs to wear contacts at night. I’ve heard of a girl who got a single because she was gluten intolerant.

That’s why I felt justified in claiming endometriosis as a disability. It is a painful condition in which cells from the uterus grow outside the womb. I’m often doubled over in agony from the problem, for which there is no known cure, so I decided to ask for a single room in a campus dorm where I could endure those moments in private.

The application process was very easy. I registered my condition on the Stanford Office of Accessible Education website and made an appointment to meet an adviser later that week. The system is staffed largely by empathetic women who want to help students.

As I explained my diagnosis and symptoms over Zoom to one woman, she listened, nodded sympathetically, related my problems to her own life and asked a few basic questions. Within 30 minutes, I was registered as a student with a disability, entitled to more accommodations than I asked for.

In addition to a single housing assignment, I was granted extra absences from class, some late days on assignments and a 15-minute tardiness allowance for all of my classes. I was met with so little scepticism or questioning, I probably didn’t even need a doctor’s note to get these exemptions. Had I been pushier, I am sure I could have received almost any accommodation I asked for.

While I feel entitled to my single room, I would feel guilty about some of the perks I have — except that so many of my fellow students have gamed the system. Take Callie, a recent Stanford grad with ADHD and Asperger’s who agreed to be quoted under a pseudonym. Callie was diagnosed with her conditions in elementary school; in return, Stanford granted her a single room for all four years, plus extra time on tests — and a few more perks.

“In college, I haven’t had that many ‘in real life’ tests as opposed to take-home essays,” Callie told me. “When I did use the extra time, I felt guilty, because I probably didn’t deserve the accommodations, given the fact I got into Stanford and could compete at a high academic level. Extra time on tests — some students even get double time — seems unfair to me.”

But at Stanford, almost no one talks about the system with shame. Rather, we openly discuss, strategise and even joke about it. At a university of savvy optimisers, the feeling is that if you aren’t getting accommodations, you haven’t tried hard enough.

Another student told me that special “accommodations are so prevalent that they effectively only punish the honest”. Academic accommodations, they added, help “students get ahead … which puts a huge proportion of the class on an unfair playing ground”.

The gaming even extends to our meals. Stanford requires most undergraduates living on campus to purchase a meal plan, which costs $7,944 for the 2025-26 academic year. But students can get exempted if they claim a religious dietary restriction that the college kitchens cannot accommodate.

And so, some students I know claim to be devout members of the Jain faith, which rejects any food that may cause harm to all living creatures — including small insects and root vegetables. The students I know who claim to be Jain (but aren’t) spend their meal money at Whole Foods instead and enjoy freshly made salads and other yummy dishes, while the rest of us are stuck with college meals, like burgers made partly from “mushroom mix”.

Administrators seem powerless to reform the system and frankly don’t seem to care. How do you prove someone doesn’t have anxiety? How do you verify they don’t need extra time on a test? How do you challenge a religious dietary claim without risking a discrimination lawsuit?

I often think back to that conversation with my upperclassman friend. She wasn’t proud of gaming the system and she wasn’t ashamed either. She was simply rational. The university had created a set of incentives and she had simply responded to them.

That’s what strikes me most about the accommodation explosion at Stanford and similar schools. The students aren’t exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them? Stanford has made gaming the system the logical choice. When accommodations mean the difference between a cramped triple and your own room, when extra test time can boost your grade point average, opting out feels like self-sabotage. Who would make their lives harder when the easiest option is just a 30-minute Zoom call away?

[ Via: https://archive.md/tml92 ]

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This is the study Rob is referring to:

Abstract

We investigate the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue. In our first three studies, we show that the virtuous victim signal can facilitate nonreciprocal resource transfer from others to the signaler. Next, we develop and validate a victim signaling scale that we combine with an established measure of virtue signaling to operationalize the virtuous victim construct. We show that individuals with Dark Triad traits-Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy-more frequently signal virtuous victimhood, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables that are commonly associated with victimization in Western societies. In Study 5, we show that a specific dimension of Machiavellianism-amoral manipulation-and a form of narcissism that reflects a person's belief in their superior prosociality predict more frequent virtuous victim signaling. Studies 3, 4, and 6 test our hypothesis that the frequency of emitting virtuous victim signal predicts a person's willingness to engage in and endorse ethically questionable behaviors, such as lying to earn a bonus, intention to purchase counterfeit products and moral judgments of counterfeiters, and making exaggerated claims about being harmed in an organizational context. 

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NEW YORK — Columbia University has agreed to take additional steps to make its students feel secure on campus under a settlement reached Tuesday with a Jewish student who had sought a court order requiring the Ivy League school provide safe access to the campus amid protests against Israel over its war in Gaza with Hamas.

The law firm representing the plaintiff in the lawsuit, filed as a class action complaint, called the settlement a “first-of-its-kind agreement to protect Jewish students from extreme on-campus Gaza war protestors.”

Under the agreement, Columbia must create a new point of contact — a Safe Passage Liaison — for students worried for their safety. The liaison will handle student safety concerns and coordinate any student requests for escorts through an existing escort program, which must remain available 24/7 through at least December 31, according to the agreement.

The settlement also makes academic accommodations for students who couldn’t access campus to complete assignments or exams, among other provisions. The Jewish plaintiff, known by the initials CS, said Columbia’s decision to let students take classes online in response to the protests showed that the school had become too dangerous for Jewish students to receive the education they were promised.

Accommodations don't completely level the playing field between me and my peers.

Accommodations don't change the fact this speaking math to a computer is at best half the speed of typing.

They don't prevent my fatigue or help me stay awake in that early morning class (that wasn't offered at any other time).

They don't fix all of the inaccessible computer infrastructure or recoup the time that I spend emailing seven different departments about their inaccessible online trainings.

Accommodations can't remove the stress of asking for extra help or give me extra hours in the day to study.

Accommodations don't change the fact that, if my peers sleep eight hours a night while I need 10, my peers get an extra 14 hours per week to study or relax.

Accommodations don't remove the fog that clouds my brain when sensory stimuli overwhelm me.

They can't stop pain from breaking my focus on my academic work.

Accommodations are crucial, but they don't remove the effects of my disability.

Let me tell you a story.

About five years ago, when I was in an earlier stage of developing my disability (and before that condition was diagnosed), I took a math test. The physical act of writing was a painful for me, and I had no academic accommodations to help me complete the exam. For the first couple questions, I did okay. Writing hurt, but I was able to focus my brain on the math in front of me. By the time I got to the middle of the test, though, the pain was starting to break through my focus. I made many little mistakes, but I couldn't focus well enough to find them. I knew my answers were wrong, but I couldn't process mathematics over the screaming cacophony of my pain. By the end of the exam, it felt like someone was twisting a knife inside of my wrist while simultaneously stabbing me with a fork in the elbow. I could not think. I could not reason. I could barely contain my tears. I turned in an incomplete exam, and I started sobbing as soon as I got out of the classroom.  I failed the exam.

Just a few months ago, I took another exam. This exam was much longer and much more important. It was scheduled to last nine hours across two days, and I absolutely had to pass it in order to progress in my PhD program. And there was one other important difference: this time, I had academic accommodations. I was registered with disability services, and I had had extensive discussions with my program director to negotiate appropriate accommodations for this crucial exam. I received twice as much time to work on the exam, and I was allowed to take four days instead of two to complete it. I had unlimited rest breaks and a physically comfortable workspace, including a mat where I could lie down during my breaks. I also had assistive technology. I "wrote" all of my answers by speaking to a computer.

The exam was still exhausting. At the end of it, I still wanted to collapse in bed for an indeterminate amount of time. And I did make a couple of errors near the end of the exam that I would not have made in a well-rested and pain-minimal state. I also know that I was still somewhat limited by my restricted ability to do hand computations (due to hand and arm pain made much worse by repetitive fine motor activities). So, no, the accommodations were not perfect. They did not remove my disability or put me on "a level playing field" with my abled peers. But that does not negate their importance. This exam went much better than predecessor. This time, I was actually able to demonstrate my mastery of mathematics. This time, I passed.