Students say they faced discrimination at UNB law school, filing complaints
2 law students say disability accommodations were delayed, denied
Morgan Higginson doesn't shy away from a challenge. She has faced them her entire life as someone who lives with multiple disabilities.
But now, as a third year law student at the University of New Brunswick, she's in unfamiliar territory, fighting for academic accommodations that had previously been granted.
Higginson said she is filing a complaint with the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission, and Nicholas Frost, who graduated from UNB law school last year, has already filed one.
Both say they would like to see the university revise its policy around disabilities and add an appeals process. More than anything, they hope their complaints will lead to an investigation by the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission into how accommodations are granted.
The commission recognizes "the fundamental principle that all persons are equal in dignity and human rights without regard to ... physical disability, mental disability … sanctioned by the laws of New Brunswick."
Higginson has several physical illnesses that have impacted her since childhood. Her health issues later grew to include anxiety, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, autism and learning disabilities around reading and writing.
Despite those challenges, she persevered through school, and her undergrad studies at UNB, with certain accommodations that allowed her additional time during tests, virtual learning, help with taking notes and flexible attendance.
But when she began law school, she says those supports disappeared. In her first meeting about accommodations, she said the associate dean of law, "started crossing out things that were on the accommodation list, saying, 'OK, well, you can't have recordings and slides and a note taker. You get one of those.'"
A privileged profession
That response was not surprising to Odelia Bay, who has first-hand experience with these situations as one of the co-founders of the Canadian Association of Lawyers with Disabilities, and as someone who had to negotiate for her own law school accommodations at the University of Ottawa when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
She said lawyers are in a very privileged profession, and law schools tend to operate as if they're their "own little fiefdom" within a university culture. Marginalized groups have historically been told they don't have what it takes to be a lawyer, she said.
"I've certainly heard people say that we are putting these standards in place in order to prepare law students for the real world," Bay said. But she believes there is much more flexibility and accommodation offered in practice than there is in law school.
The emotional toll it takes to have people in authority, implicitly and explicitly say that you are a liar ... It honestly breaks you.- Nicholas Frost
CBC News reached out to the UNB faculty of law for an interview. That request was declined.
In a statement, UNB president Paul Mazerolle said the Student Accessibility Centre "works closely with the students from all faculties … to ensure that students with documented disabilities receive reasonable accommodations."
"Accommodations must not interfere with the university's ability to appropriately assess the articulated essential learning outcomes of the course or program," Mazerolle's statement said.
"The law school, which is externally approved, has programming requirements that align with expectations for the legal profession. All students, including those with accommodations, are required to meet these standards and are supported in meeting them."
No consistency for accommodations
For Higginson, those three accommodations for recordings, slides and a note taker were eventually approved by the associate dean, but not granted by every professor. She said her relationships with staff have crumbled as a result, and many other accommodation requests have since been refused.
She said they interpret guidelines in a way that works best for faculty, rather than what would be more beneficial to the students, which she said is "incredibly hurtful."
That room for interpretation was made clear when Nicholas Frost, in a private Facebook group for UNB law students with disabilities, shared the accommodations he was eventually granted.
These included having exams spaced four or five days apart and scheduled in the afternoon, to accommodate his neck injuries and sleeping issues. There were also accommodations for his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, he said, and it took three years in law school to have everything finally approved.
Higginson said those posts started a dialogue where students began talking among themselves, comparing documentation and accommodations, realizing "there was no consistency in terms of how they were deciding things."
She believes her peers would have similar grounds to file a complaint, but said many are fearful "because reputation is so important in the legal profession."
Frost said he wanted to share his experience with others because he knows "how isolating and how terrible" it is to constantly be fighting for accommodations.
"The emotional toll it takes to have people in authority, implicitly and explicitly say that you are a liar, you're scamming us and we are not going to co-operate with you. It honestly breaks you."
He said accommodations "usually boil down to how much you're willing to fight and how much you're liked. You can take your choice. And if you're one of the fighters, you're going to be retaliated against."
Discretion for accommodations
Bay said the path to accommodations is not always clear, with a lot of discretion and wiggle room in terms of what a student can or will be afforded in terms of an accommodation.
She said instead of making law schools inclusive, accommodating spaces, many are moving ahead as they always have, with incremental changes. "And if that's a problem for one or two students, then it's up to them to fight that uphill battle of making the change," she said.
"That's why I say that these students are among the brightest and most hard working because they are not just managing their own academics. They are also navigating a world that is littered with systemic ableism and barriers that they have to overcome."
Frost graduated from the UNB law school last year and is preparing to write his final exam for the Law Society of Ontario, where he plans to practise.
But he hopes his Human Rights complaint will help open the dialogue for policy change at the law school — for people like Higginson — and others to follow.
"Going there was like going to hell," Frost said. "I have nothing but empathy for the people who are going through that right now because it is absolutely soul-shattering."
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