Students admit to getting higher dorm rooms, meals by ‘gaming’ incapacity lodging

Stanford pupil says ‘if you’re not gaming it, you’re placing your self at a drawback’

At Stanford University, college students are “gaming” the incapacity and spiritual lodging system to get prime dorm rooms, higher meals, and further time on exams, a junior on the California establishment wrote Monday at The Times. 

Such lodging are so frequent and really easy to acquire – practically 40 % do — that not requesting one from the elite personal college places college students at a drawback, pupil Elsa Johnson wrote.

“… 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,” she wrote. “… if you’re not gaming it, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.”

Of course, some college students do want particular lodging for debilitating disabilities like epilepsy or anaphylactic allergy symptoms, however Johnson mentioned others are abusing the system:

And some “disabilities” are simply downright foolish. Students declare “night terrors”; others say they “get easily distracted” or they “can’t live with others”. I do know a man who was granted a single room as a result of he must put on contacts at evening. I’ve heard of a lady who obtained a single as a result of she was gluten illiberal.

Callie, a latest graduate of Stanford, obtained additional time on exams as a result of she has Asperger’s and ADHD, however she advised Johnson that she didn’t actually need it.

“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,” she advised Johnson. “Extra time on tests — some students even get double time — seems unfair to me.”

Many college students use lodging to get higher housing, and a few higher meals, Johnson wrote: 

Stanford requires most undergraduates dwelling on campus to buy a meal plan, which prices $7,944 for the 2025-26 educational yr. But college students can get exempted in the event that they declare a non secular dietary restriction that the school kitchens can not accommodate.

And so, some college students I do know declare to be religious members of the Jain religion, which rejects any meals which will trigger hurt to all dwelling creatures — together with small bugs and root greens. The college students I do know who declare to be Jain (however aren’t) spend their meal cash at Whole Foods as a substitute and luxuriate in freshly made salads and different yummy dishes, whereas the remainder of us are caught with faculty meals, like burgers made partly from “mushroom mix”.

And the issue isn’t simply at Stanford, she continued, citing statistics from Brown and Harvard universities the place at the very least 20 % of scholars have incapacity lodging.

Meanwhile, at UC Berkeley, greater than half of the incapacity lodging given to college students are for “psychological/emotional” causes, The College Fix reported in January.

“Contrast these numbers with America’s community colleges, where only 3 to 4 per cent of students receive disability accommodations,” Johnson wrote. “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.”

A latest examine by Alvin Christian on the University of Michigan discovered a gentle rise in lodging at universities nation-wide. 

“… between 2011 and 2024, the share of students approved for accommodations more than doubled from 4% to 10% … and that growth is accompanied by accommodations for mental health diagnoses in college, which quadrupled during this time period,” in accordance with his analysis, which The Fix reported about final month. 

Also, “[m]en and Asian students are half as likely to use accommodations (relative to women and white students, respectively),” in accordance with his analysis.

Financial class is one other distinguisher as “low-income and high-income students are more likely to use [accommodations] compared to their middle-income peers.”

However, a incapacity rights chief who spoke with The Fix identified that there’s a lack of analysis on alleged abuses of incapacity lodging in larger schooling.

MORE: More than half of UC Berkeley incapacity lodging are ’emotional’