BUZZ
Students at elite law schools ‘are significantly more likely to be disabled’ than the elderly … ?
Approximately one-third of students enrolled at the University of California Berkeley School of Law officially have a “psychological” or “other mental” disability, according to a recent report.
Recent UC Berkeley Law graduate Andrew Testerman notes in a James G. Martin Center article that 37.5 percent of UC Berkeley Law students get some sort of disability accommodation, a figure greater than the total number of male students at the school.
Ninety-eight percent of those “have a primary or secondary diagnosis of ‘ADD/ADHD,’ ‘anxiety,’ or (somewhat less commonly) ‘depression.’”
By comparison, American community colleges have a disability rate of 3-4 percent, and U.S. senior citizens about 24 percent.
“Yet we are asked to believe that students at elite law schools are significantly more likely to be disabled” than the elderly, Testerman says.
In addition, according to National Association for Law Placement data, only 2-3 percent of “firm lawyers” and 3.75 percent of summer associates (law school students) claim a disability.
“[T]hese figures represent the entire universe of disabilities, a fact that would require us to believe not just that nearly every disabled student is failing to claim disability status, but also that lawyers with disabilities other than ‘ADHD’ and ‘anxiety’ are essentially nonexistent,” Testerman adds.
Just five years ago, a mere three percent of all UC Berkeley graduate students said they had a disability, the New York Post reports.
Testerman says when he asked Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky about the issue, it seemed it “was not [one] he was keen to discuss,” saying the school “has no authority over accommodations.”
“The law school complies with the law, and that is all,” Chemerinsky said. He added that “reasonable accommodations,” mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act, are handled by the Disabled Students’ Program.
In response to Chemerinsky accusing him of “having an agenda,” Testerman says “Yes, I have an agenda: I want to take fair law school exams.
“Simply put, it is highly improbable that so many elite law students have ‘impairments’ that ‘substantially limit major life activities’ in ways that just happen to dramatically and negatively affect their ability to take tests.”
Earlier this year, The College Fix reported that more than half of the accommodations for students at UC Berkeley at large are “emotional” in nature, the most common being for ADHD/ADD.
MORE: Expansion of ‘disability’ impairs the students it aims to help: essay
