GVSU Student wins $40,000 Settlement.

[zibazinski]

I think that school could do with one less student and survive.

[zibazinski]

28 and wants to live in the dorm? Who raised this panty waste?

[Abby Normal]

Mar 13, 2013 10:41:11 GMT -5 973beachbum said:

How can I tell if an animal is really a service animal and not just a pet?

A: Some, but not all, service animals wear special collars and harnesses. Some, but not all, are licensed or certified and have identification papers. If you are not certain that an animal is a service animal, you may ask the person who has the animal if it is a service animal required because of a disability. However, an individual who is going to a restaurant or theater is not likely to be carrying documentation of his or her medical condition or disability. Therefore, such documentation generally may not be required as a condition for providing service to an individual accompanied by a service animal. Although a number of states have programs to certify service animals, you may not insist on proof of state certification before permitting the service animal to accompany the person with a disability.

www.ada.gov/qasrvc.htm

The laws on this aren't what most people would expect.  The Fed doesn't allow for individual states to have laws that service animal must be "certified" type of thing.  It really does read like the therapist really can say she needs this and if the animal is individually trained to help her it qualifies.

I think we'll be seeing legislation on this within the next 10 years.  It's getting out of control.  You can't even ask someone if it is a service animal and many people abuse the "Service" animal designation.  Which is very unfortunate.  

I have a friend who adopted a new dog.  She said she wanted to get a service jacket for it so she could take it wherever she wanted.  I went ballistic. I felt bad afterwords, but there are WAY to many people who use it just to take their animals with them.  It makes it harder for those who actually need a service animal.

[cottoncandyclouds]

Mar 13, 2013 11:23:38 GMT -5 zibazinski said:

28 and wants to live in the dorm? Who raised this panty waste?

Obviously someone who didn't get the poor little darling treated for her depression. Nor did they give her the common sense gene, oh wait my bad there is no gene... Well that explains her problem.. 

[973beachbum]

Mar 13, 2013 11:38:26 GMT -5 cottoncandyclouds said:

Mar 13, 2013 11:23:38 GMT -5 zibazinski said:

28 and wants to live in the dorm? Who raised this panty waste?

Obviously someone who didn't get the poor little darling treated for her depression. Nor did they give her the common sense gene, oh wait my bad there is no gene... Well that explains her problem.. 

It is kind of self limiting.  Who is going to hire the woman who has to bring her ginea pig to work with her to help her handle her emotional disability?

I know this makes me evil but I am actually LOL'ing just thinking about that.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Obviously someone who didn't get the poor little darling treated for her depression

They did too, they got her a guinea pig.

I'd fire that therapist. Really you're going to tell me carrying a guinea pig is the cure to all my problems?

But then this woman is probably not in state of mind where she can recognize she's being fed a bunch of BS.

Maybe she can get a contract with TLC! My life with a Guinea Pig

[Deleted]

if only the parents had aborted her when she was but an undepressed fetus.

[Phoenix84]

Mar 13, 2013 9:21:27 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Anyone else have The Green Mile and "Mr. Jingles" pop into their heads while reading this?

Our school didn't allow pets AT ALL. Do you really need to push it even farther by expecting it to be allowed in the cafeteria?

Talk about a food safety violation.

Don't you experiment on rodents and break their necks and things like that?  I have to imagine  you have no love lost for rodents .

Maybe she should have brought it to the science lab, sacrificed it for the good of science. 

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Not much anymore (yay!). DH jokes anytime we have a mouse in the house that I should let it know I break necks with a Sharpie.

I have no love lost for rodents, I have no clue why someone wants them as pets. I could handle having a roommate with one if it stayed in its cage and maybe roamed in a little plastic ball around our room but no way could I handle someone who had to take the thign EVERYWHERE with her.

Urgh urgh urgh.

[formerroomate99]

There are a lot of really bad therapists out there.  I have one friend who was absolutely ruined by her therapist.  She was a little spoiled before she started with him, but once she started with him, her sense of entitlement just exploded.  He basically taught her that she was entitleed to have all the trappings of adulthood handed to her on a silver platter without ever actually becoming a self sufficient adult.  She's 40, still living on the taxpayer's dime, complete with a college degree (also on the taxpayer's dime) in something she couldn't possibly do.  And although she has a learning disability, she's not helpless, just lazy and entitled. 

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

There are bad apples in every profession unfortunately. Sounds ilke the chick in the OP though isn't realy in a positon to properly screen therapists if she can be convinced that carrying a guinea pig around for the rest of her life is a good idea.

Your friend Former sounds like she deliberately found a therapist who told her and reinforced exactly what seh wanted to hear.

[cottoncandyclouds]

Mar 13, 2013 11:53:36 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Obviously someone who didn't get the poor little darling treated for her depression

They did too, they got her a guinea pig.

I'd fire that therapist. Really you're going to tell me carrying a guinea pig is the cure to all my problems?

But then this woman is probably not in state of mind where she can recognize she's being fed a bunch of BS.

Maybe she can get a contract with TLC! My life with a Guinea Pig

Maybe the guinea pig is her therapist.. That would explain the reason why she needs her guinea pig to be with her every where she goes.. Maybe the new name for that TLC show should be "My Guinea Pig, My Therapist." The life in the day of a young women who's guinea pig is also her therapist. 

In all seriousness, people should know themselves well enough to know if they are able to cope being at a four year college. If she can't make do without having a guinea pig to help soothe her irrational tendencies, than she should have gone to a community college like the rest of us who don't want to, or know we can't go to a four year school because of "xyz" problem.

[Deleted]

Guinea pigs STINK!  I let my son get one when he was 4.  Our neighbor was moving and couldn't take it with them...so I let him have it.  OMG did it stink.  I had to constantly clean the cage so that my whole living room didn't smell like it.  I wouldn't let him take it upstairs because I felt he was too young to care for it on his own.  Over the years my kids have asked for another one and I always so NO WAY!  I did it once...never again.

Oh and they eat them here in Italy too.  There is a restaurant less than 2 miles from me that has them on the menu.  I won't order it, but my Italian friends have and said it was good.  No thanks.

[Mardi Gras Audrey]

I always wonder how therapists who are seeing people like this woman and former's friend deal with it.  Not on a professional level, just on a human level.  Wouldn't someone this whiny and entitled just get on your nerves?  I could keep the professionalism going for a bit but after awhile, you'd think the therapist would get sick of hearing it and tell the patient to put on their big girl panties and deal with life...

[Deleted]

LMAO @ this whole thread

[Deleted]

Don't be laughing at my guinea pig...

I mean HER guinea pig.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

They eat guinea pig in a lot of South American countries too. I've heard the meat is really sweet. I wouldn't order a whole one myself but I'd be willing to try one with a group.

Cotton I don't think this lady would be able to cope in a community college either. I wonder how she's going to cope with life period because nobody is going to want to be around the guinea pig lady.

Now I have a mental picture of the cat lady in The Simpsons who's always throwing her cats at people. You could probably get good distance with a guinea pig.

[tractor]

This is in my back yard (I went to GVSU for two years). While I don't know her, my guess is she has many more social problems than they mentioned in the article. The money she won will probably just go to the lawer, and she will be back home with Mom and Dad for the rest of her life.

[973beachbum]

Mar 13, 2013 13:26:04 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

They eat guinea pig in a lot of South American countries too. I've heard the meat is really sweet. I wouldn't order a whole one myself but I'd be willing to try one with a group.

Cotton I don't think this lady would be able to cope in a community college either. I wonder how she's going to cope with life period because nobody is going to want to be around the guinea pig lady.

Now I have a mental picture of the cat lady in The Simpsons who's always throwing her cats at people. You could probably get good distance with a guinea pig.

DH teaches at a little CC as an adjunct.  Every now and then he gets a student who informs him that they are disabled and he has to do whatever.   He always comes home with a pained look on his face.   He says he  follows the letter of the law but it clearly annoys him the way some students act. 

My fav was the student that filed a complaint that they were discriminated because he didn't allow them enought "extra" time on a test for them to pass it.   The kicker is it was a take home test that gave the students like 9 days to complete.   

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Maybe the student's Guinea Pig was in the hospital those nine days. He had to wait till it recovered in order to be relaxed enough to take the test.

[973beachbum]

Mar 13, 2013 13:37:54 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Maybe the student's Guinea Pig was in the hospital those nine days. He had to wait till it recovered in order to be relaxed enough to take the test.

It is literally a pretty straight forward math test that they can literally Google the answers or have their mom do for them.  the whole point is to give them something to practice on and be able to use as a study guide for the "real test" in class.  If DH doesn't get it back on that day he won't have enough time to grade it and get it back for them to use as a study guide. 

He probably would do whatever a student needed if he could.  He has had students who were disabled and he can never get them to accept accomadations.   Then he gets some who insist he has to provide them with accomadations but can't come up with anything reasonable.  It ususally ends upwith them basically wanting an A without them having to do anything.

His usual answer is to send them to the head of the dept and lets them do anything they feel is appropiate. 

[formerroomate99]

Mar 13, 2013 13:20:06 GMT -5 Mardi Gras Audrey said:

I always wonder how therapists who are seeing people like this woman and former's friend deal with it.  Not on a professional level, just on a human level.  Wouldn't someone this whiny and entitled just get on your nerves?  I could keep the professionalism going for a bit but after awhile, you'd think the therapist would get sick of hearing it and tell the patient to put on their big girl panties and deal with life...

This is one reason Dr Phil got out of the therapy business.  He couldn't stand it. 

I have a feeling that the lawsuit and putting Mrs Nutjob on campus is just her parents wanting to wash their hands of this and get this kid out of their hair. 

[zibazinski]

Ima, aren't you kind of glad now DSD isn't going there! Talk about a rep smear. No way would I want my kid to go to a school that put up with this. It's not like its a seeing eye dog for Pete's sake, although I was on a plane one time with a guy who kept complaining about someone's seeing eye dog because he had allergies. I felt sorry for him because he was a mess but shut up, the guy was frickin' blind. It wasn't a bloody COMFORT animal but his eyes!

[Deleted]

Zib, I still would be ok with her going there and I wish there was still a way she could cover it.  I don't think bad of the school at all.  I think they did the best they could but their hands got tied.
There really wasn't much the school could do other than pay very high legal bills.  As it was, they fought it for a year before they finally settled. I think it was better to settle than bankrupt the school. 

[The Captain]

I believe in some countries (UK perhaps) if you file a lawsuite and lose then the person who you sued can go after you for recovery of their legal bills?

We seriously need something like that in the US!

[Deleted]

OMG Zib, I thought you said "pap smear"!  I was like, what the hell?!

Her parents probably encouraged her to live on campus because that's the only way they could get her out of their hair.



I know that's mean, but come on!

[Deleted]

Mar 13, 2013 14:19:16 GMT -5 The Captain said:

I believe in some countries (UK perhaps) if you file a lawsuite and lose then the person who you sued can go after you for recovery of their legal bills?

We seriously need something like that in the US!

I don't know about all that.  It does happen in some frivolous suits, but I wouldn't make it a hard and fast rule.  Not all lawsuits are frivolous, and just because the defendant wasn't found guilty/liable doesn't make it true.

[swamp]

I'm going out and getting a guinea pig.  And he's going everywhere with me.  I will love him and squeeze him and pet his pretty feathers.  And will call him George.

[zibazinski]

    I'm getting a ferret and taking into Publix with me. I need it for comfort at the hi grocery prices!

[973beachbum]

You guys are all cracking me up!  Then I think about what DH would be like if he had to have a class with a student holding their therapy guinea pig.  He uowld need serious therapy after that!