The real victims of the college admissions scams are people with disabilities

Author Rebecca Cokley warns that the college admissions scam may engender further attacks on the disability community, such as stigmatization of students with disabilities and a crackdown on the provision of reasonable accommodations.

The experiences of 57 million Americans with disabilities are not just costumes to wear to get preboarding access to a plane or extended time on a test. Accessing those rights could become a lot harder now, thanks to well-heeled parents who are charged in a scheme to abuse disability accommodations in order to fake their children’s scores on college admissions exams. The ugliness of this alleged scam is even more apparent when we consider how expensive it is to have a real disability.

The criminal complaint filed Tuesday alleges that college admissions adviser William “Rick” Singer coached families to have their children fake disabilities, making them eligible to take tests at facilities where bribed proctors would either correct the students’ tests or take the exams for them. When the students met with the doctors who would need to approve their accommodations, “The goal is to be slow, to be not as bright,” Singer advised in a wiretapped phone call.

The above excerpt was originally published in The Washington Post. Click here to view the full article.

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