Required Medical Leave

This is a proposed new rule for my college (may have already gone through, my e-mail went on the fritz at about the worst time). It came, interestingly enough, after a proposal for the police to acquire rifles to deal with an active shooter failed, and during that discourse, many of the people against the proposal said that there should be preventive measures such as counseling instead, and in the listserv I warned of the potential for us to become overly vigilant for anyone who looks to be outside of the norm, to overly screen if prevention is our only means of addressing such a rare yet devastating situation (not that prevention would be 100% anyway, even if the schools excluded everyone who ever had a psych diagnosis before).

While this rule does not appear to be related (it includes physical disabilities as well), I cannot help but wonder how the culture will continue to evolve, here and elsewhere:

Issuing a required medical leave of absence.

(1) The dean of student and academic support services, or the dean's designee, (hereinafter collectively referred to as the "dean") may require a student to take a medical leave of absence if a student has a physical illness or a mental, emotional or psychological condition and as a result of the condition: (a) Is engaging in, or is threatening to engage in, behavior that poses a significant danger of causing substantial harm to the health, safety or welfare of the student or others; or (b) The student's behavior has resulted in substantial harm to the health, safety, or welfare of the student, or others and the behavior continues, or there is a risk the behavior will continue, posing a significant danger of causing substantial harm to the health, safety, or welfare of the student or others; or (c) The student's behavior has resulted in significant disruption of the teaching, learning or administrative activities of other members of the campus community and the behavior continues, or there is a risk the behavior will continue, with the likely result of such behavior substantially impeding the education processes or proper activities or functions of the college and its personnel.

(2) In determining whether to require a student to take a medical leave of absence, the dean shall consult with the director of health and counseling services, or the director's designee (hereinafter collectively referred to as "director of health and counseling services") and, where possible, other persons who can provide relevant information about a student's condition.

(3) Prior to the dean requiring a student to take a medical leave of absence, the student shall be provided an opportunity to present information about his or her circumstances, where reasonably possible, to the dean. A student waives their opportunity to provide information if he or she is unwilling or unable to meet with the dean in a timely manner.

(4) The dean shall issue the required medical leave of absence in writing to the student. The written notice shall include the effective date of the leave, the reasons for requiring the leave, the conditions for reenrollment, and any restrictions imposed on the student's access to the campus or college-sponsored activities.

(5) The required medical leave of absence shall be effective twenty-one days after it is served on the student, unless the student files a timely written appeal of the dean's decision as set forth in these rules. Service of the dean's decision shall be complete upon deposit in the United States mail to the student, postage prepaid and properly addressed to the student at the last known address on file with the registrar's office, or by personal service on the student.

Note that "danger of causing substantial harm to" is delineated as separate from "behavior has resulted in substantial harm to", and is a criterion for required medical leave as well. While I think it is the best course of action for a college to put students in touch with resources in the community if they are posing a danger to their health and safety (but not to anyone else) rather than to boot them off campus, it is the "welfare" criterion that seems widest and most vulnerable to abuse.

I think the main flaws in it is that it doesn't distinguish between procedures for requiring a student to leave who is posing risk to only themselves or to others as well. For instance, someone who has difficulty keeping their room clean and so it is a fire hazard, poses a (small) danger to themselves. But in this, they would be treated with the same procedures as someone who is violent in classes and has suicidal thoughts expressed.

It is also made clear that it may be difficult to reenroll:

Returning from a required medical leave of absence.

(1) A student wishing to be considered for reenrollment to the college shall submit an application for reenrollment to the dean at least one month prior to the start of the quarter in which the student wishes to reenroll. The student shall provide appropriate documentation with any conditions for reenrollment set forth in the dean's decision. If a student files an appeal of the dean's decision, and the conditions for reenrollment are modified by the review board, the student shall provide evidence that the conditions set forth in the review board's order have been met. A student must also meet all other admission or enrollment requirements of the college for reenrollment.

(2) The dean shall consult with the director of health and counseling prior to determining if the student may reenroll.

(3) The dean shall notify the student in writing of the decision and the conditions associated with the approval or denial for reenrollment. 

(c) Washington State Code Reviser's Office

So one has to re-apply to the college, and then after that, the dean meets with the counselor and health people to see if they approve. In addition to meeting the normal requirements to admission. Unless someone is posing a danger to the community, I don't see how this can be construed as right. As an optional procedure to assist a student in determining preparedness, yes, great, I'm all for it. But what if external observations have enough distortion to put a decision out of your favor?


I was reading through an evaluation of me that was very detailed (some tests and interviews to ascertain dx and functioning), and while it captured the state of living and my general appearance and public approach to strangers, it was full of half-truths (not to imply deception, as in addition to being based on only a glimpse of my life and on the notes that were written down rather than on an amazing memory, but also that my approach to strangers is vastly different to how I am with others, mostly consisting of common stock pleasantries, echolalia, stimming, and stronger sensory experiences).

(In a further confirmation of this fact of life, they even wrote a half-truth that is concretely, verifiably false: that I'd never had an IEP based on a misunderstanding of my interview statements about how the high school delayed my IEP and never gave transition services other than a short paper detailing my strengths and weaknesses, which, while admittedly could have been clearer, were very detailed and repeated often enough. While this could just as well have been due to ambiguity in my account I gave - I do not recall such large extent of ambiguity as to grant such large discrepancies of accounts, but memory is fallible and it is quite possible - psychological consultations consist largely, almost entirely of statements of the individual and the interpretations made of them, so a clumsily constructed explanation should not be relied on, and hopefully such reports would be taken with large hills of salt).

Oddly enough, it was another half-truth, though one much more reflective of reality, when it was noted that I had never received transition services yet received some form of special education services.

Come to think of it, I have no idea what she thought I was trying to say based off what came out in that weird report! Just got back the report, GAF 40-45 and autism confirmed via ABAS and ADOS; WASI 3 in similarities, 17 vocab, 14 block design, 12 matrix reasoning; apparently they say I have a disability called chemical sensitivity when I referred to my being overstimulated by certain smells - yet another half-truth finding its way into report, my facts, perspectives on them, mixing with their interpretations and vantage points, this climate seems optimized to highlight the biases in human perspectives and reporting which makes a real problem when one person's report is seen as less valuable or reliable a contribution.

The Burden of Children's Health

I was watching the news when they started discussing people who elect not to vaccinate their children, with mention of the fear that vaccines may cause autism.

First of all, it made me sad that people are so uninformed and/or misinformed about autistic people that they'd rather not have one of us as their kids.

Second, I had to fight my natural inclination to blame plain, ordinary human stupidity and paranoia. The fact is that like the burden of proof that exists in a court of law, there is a burden of the health of not only our children, but those of future generations. We each carry a bit of this burden in the responsibility we exercise in our decisions, but there are others whose burden in protecting children's health is far greater than any individual alone.

Yes, the people who decry the vaccines for this connection they claim to have undeniable proof of, they carry a large portion of this (ir)responsibility. I hate it when people lie to other people, particularly those people who lie to parents, teachers, and others who have authority over the lives of children. While I am sure that some of the main anti-vaccine people actually believe what they are saying, there are many who are abusing the concern parents have for their children and using the lack of good information about autistics to this end.

In reading this blog post, I have come to a startling realization: the alternate vaccine schedule promoted, which omits vaccinations for measles, mumps, and rubella (doesn't even include them separately), in leaving children unprotected from measles, would result in 1-2 in 1,000 children infected to die of measles. If every child (or even a majority) weren't vaccinated, that would be a lot of kids overall. Maybe to the anti-vaccine people this is rare, but would these same people consider telling that same thing to each parent of the future children who would die this way?

Likewise, any individual or organization takes a larger share of the burden when they put out negative and misleading propaganda. Being autistic is not a ride on the merry-go-round (however many times we may spin!) but it is not a hell either (though oftentimes we are told it so much that we become depressed and begin to believe that some monster called autism is the cause of our sadness). And showing purely the negatives, and misinforming people about autistics leads to a parent fear having an autistic child more than a dead one.

For even if it was a well-accepted, completely verified fact that the vaccines cause autism, autistics can and do have good quality of life (which is remarkable not because we're autistic, but because the majority of autistics have been abused). A dead person cannot have a good quality of life. There is no opportunity for life. And there is no way to mitigate the disadvantages of being dead.

Sick, and Other Thoughts

Club Rush is this week, which means I'm going to represent the clubs I lead (including Gay-Straight Alliance and Autistic Rights Advocacy). Hopefully more people will join and attend this semester, now that I've got things a little more organized.

I got a new magnifying glass from the Braille Institute this Friday, so I can actually read my textbooks now! :) I can now get to a backlog of work I have for some of my classes.

For the Club Rush day, I plan to have at the table a jar where people can put a dollar bill or coins into, to go towards our club's book fundraising drive to donate positive and informative books about autism to the local libraries. I am thinking of calling it Education For Autism.

I also want to hand out stickers, and I intend to have some informative videos playing on my computer. I am also putting together flyers and information sheets.

An interesting thing about being sick, I've noticed, is that it takes longer for me to execute certain actions, such as brushing my teeth or going to the bathroom or fixing tea. My skin is really very sensitive right now, much more so than usual, and it is very difficult to coordinate my thoughts.

Hense the rambling nature of the post.

The other night I got frightened because I had had hardly any sleep, and on the ceiling I saw this circle of reflected light on the ceiling. I couldn't figure out the source, though, so I started walking around the room and the hallway, looking to see if I was blocking out the light source and making the ceiling reflection disappear. Twice I succeeded in this, but it wasn't until the second time that I realized what the light source was.

It was a light from the laundry room, which I soon discovered was bounding off of a CD left on top of the sofa. I put it in between the pages of a notebook, as my eyes would play tricks and make me think the light was moving.

It reminded me of when I was very little, maybe about three or four, and I would sit with these small rectangular mirrors, and bounce light from them onto the walls. My dad would join me, and one of us dubbed them UFOs.

A funny thing about the IEP meeting a few weeks ago -- apparently autism isn't even listed in it! They had just listed Speech and Language Impairment. The actual IEP report also has some other glaring omissions, such as saying that adaptive/daily living skills are "not an area of unique need" (even though I'm 18 and in less than a year supposed to live on my own).

It has some mention of social skills difficulty, and states that I have "difficulty to maintain detailed organization with [my] papers and materials". True enough, at least for the latter, but I find it ironic that the difficulties I have that are quite common among people my age get mentioned specifically, whereas my more unique needs are completely ignored, despite my specific input.

In fact, my only social skills deficit (that I can think of) is in cutting into a group that has already formed. My main thing is with figuring out what and how I need to do things in order to get around. How to maintain daily living skills. Why nobody but me (and occasionally, my parents) has been mentioning these things, which are the most important as I'm going to be living independently, I don't know.

My primary issue: Trouble organizing, I can get help from the tutoring and help center available for disabled students. Trouble getting into groups, might impact in lab work or if we have to choose groups for small discussions, but I can usually get around that by approaching the teacher and asking to be placed in a group.

But there isn't going to be a teacher in my dorm room reminding me to brush my teeth and take showers and eat and drink and do laundry. So far, my efforts in these things, even if starting successfully, have deteriorated and I stop doing them.

And so, being sick, I now factor in the additional difficulties of when I'm sick. These things take longer, and get done with far less frequency, when I'm sick and also alone. I usually spend a few weeks to a month or two out of the year sick to some degree (usually only 3-7 weeks a year of really bad -for me- sickness, which is what I'm in the middle of).

I also missed my astronomy class tonight. It's really too bad, since we're starting on new material, and I would've learned what my grade was on the last test.