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Below is my mother's contribution (see previous emails for details):

J.L. Mahood
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Dear Ms. MacDonald:

I am writing to add a mother's perspective to the problem of ATTEMPTING to eat gluten-free on a college campus.  As my daughter Jessica Mahood has probably told you, she attended a small college in Indiana which required living on-campus for at least the freshman year.   We were told in advance that her disability would be accommodated.

The first semester we arranged to have a conference with the dining hall chef and we kept food specifically labelled for her use (but purchased by us in addition to the usual fee) in their freezer.  As long as there was someone preparing the food who was willing to make the effort to fix something separate for her to eat, and who had the intelligence to comprehend the many ways gluten can contaminate foods that appear to be gluten-free, she was able to live with this arrangement.   She was given special permission to have a small refrigerator and microwave in her room as well.

Unfortunately, that one special person in her cafeteria left to take another position over Christmas break.  Trying to eat on campus rapidly became a nightmare for her and for us.  I was amazed that this resulted in an extremely heated discussion with the campus ADA administrator, who told me it was important to be patient while they "worked things out."   At that point, my daughter had already had two weeks of being unable to eat in the dining hall.  I asked this person, how long would she like to go without eating?

I can easily see where eating gluten-free on a larger campus would be impossible.  All that would need to happen is to have some uninformed food service worker use the same spoon to stir or serve a gluten-free food that had just been used for a dish containing gluten, and the unsuspecting Celiac student could suffer a gluten reaction that would put him or her in the emergency room and result in weeks of suffering.   Our daughter ended up being literally sick and tired for most of the second semester of her freshman year. This is hardly what I would call a reasonable accommodation.

If I EVER had to go through this nightmare again, I would sue the college to allow my student to live off campus where she could prepare her own food under controlled conditions.

I later heard that a Celiac student who applied the following year was told flatly that her disability could not be accommodated at Butler.  I do not know whether she was allowed to live off campus or had to choose another college.

Being allowed to live off-campus is the ONLY alternative to the equivalent of playing Russian roulette with what is effectively food poisoning - on a daily basis.  In short, independent living is, in this circumstance, a necessity to basic health and any chance at a successful college experience.

Please feel free to email me if you have any futher questions -

Susan Mahood

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