Beaver
Issue 856 | 11.10.16
the
Newspaper of the LSE Students’ Union
LSE Student Seeks Financial Compensation Over Botched Exams LSE Undergraduate submits complaint to independent arbitrator; claiming that the school’s failure to recognise his medically required examination arrangement needs led to deterioration in mental health and a wasted year. Frank Morley Undergraduate Student THE LSE’S APPALLING record on student satisfaction, as highlighted in this year’s National Student Survey, is well known. What is less well known - or perhaps overlooked - is the role disability can play at a University where being happy is already difficult. There are frustrations that seem quintessentially LSE late timetables, substandard feedback, half of campus being boarded off for three years, an inflexible bureaucracy. These issues, and many others besides, are magnified by disability. For Muhummed Cassidy, a second year Law student and the LSESU’s Disabled Students’ Officer, that disability is hyper-sensitivity to noise and his experiences at LSE have driven him to submit a formal complaint to the Office of the independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA). The LSE are fully aware of Muhummed’s disability based on medical evidence that has been submitted and subsequently accepted by the school. Speaking to the Beaver, Muhummed told of a diagnostic assessment - facilitated and funded by the LSE - which culminated in a report that made explicit reference to his hyper-sensitivity to noise. Muhummed’s sensitivity to noise is such that the diagnostic report acknowledged that conditions for the medical assessment were ‘ideal…with no interruptions’, but noted that sound of rainfall outside was noticed by Muhummed. That this fact, which may seem incidental, was included in a medical diagnosis would appear to highlight the author’s acknowledgement of the severity of Muhummed’s
condition. An addendum to this report dated 19th March, 2015 stated that Muhummed was ‘very sensitive to noise which he finds very disturbing’. Muhummed’s needs-assessment report; a separate document held by the LSE, additionally stated that ‘…Muhummed reports that he is easily distracted by noise and other events happening around him; he prefers to read in a quiet space’, further stating that he ‘…has difficulty remaining focused in public study areas, he needs to work in a quiet environment.’ According to its website, the LSE undertakes needsassessments ‘…to identify what equipment, software or study
instances where disabled students would otherwise be disadvantaged. Despite the information the school held on Muhummed, this did not appear to be the case for him. In the main exam period of the 2014/15 academic year, when Muhummed initially sat his first year exams, he was placed
support will enable you (students) to fulfill your (their) potential on your (their) course of study’. The Equality Act of 2010 articulates disability as a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ effect on the ability to carry out normal activities. It also places a duty of care on universities to anticipate and make reasonable adjustments in
in a room in which several other candidates were typing their examination scripts. This provision was both irrelevant and sorely inadequate to Muhummed’s needs, particularly given as keyboards are - generally speaking - louder than pens on paper. After sitting LL108 and LL109, Muhummed did not feel able or comfortable sitting his remaining exams unless he could do so in conditions which mitigated for his hyper-sensitivity to noise, and as a result was graded absent for his three remaining compulsory module exams for Summer 2015. The LLB programme regulations state that in order to progress, ‘all 5 examinations’ must be passed. On this basis, t the school dictated that Muhummed must re-take all 5 examinations, including the 2 for which he subsequently received a passing grade, during the September resit period. Muhummed requested that the provisions be relaxed under the exceptional circumstances provisions of the LLB programme regulations. As part of this process, he presented further medical evidence which advised that, ‘we have noticed how extremely sensitive Muhummed is to noise distractions…he would find any examination setting very stressful, emotions which would be heightened if there were any interference in the expected smooth running of an examination situation.’ The evidence further stated that, ‘it would be appropriate to take Photo Credit: www.primermagazine.com
The NAB
Snapchats of the Week! Page 26
Comment
LSE: Resisting Self Awareness?
Page 11
into account the difficulties, both of the noise disturbance and of the uncertainties of the adjustments which were appropriate in his taking of examinations’. His appeal was rejected. For his September resits, the school granted Muhummed use of an individual room as part of his examination adjustments - an implicit acknowledgement that the adjustments provided in the main Summer period, which directly led to the necessity of resits, were inadequate. As a result of what he felt was unfair behaviour from the LSE - both in regards to the initial examination arrangements and the rejection of his appeal to only sit the three remaining exams he had missed - Muhummed became depressed over the Summer. He sought assistance from the LSE’s counselling service and sent letters to senior figures, including then Director Craig Calhoun, but said that such efforts were ‘to no avail’. By the time of his September resits, Muhummed felt, ‘extremely stressed and anxious’, and after finishing 3 exams, fainted and was taken to hospital in an ambulance in his 4th exam, and subsequently missed his 5th exam. These two exams were LL108 and LL109 respectively, which Muhummed previously sat and received passing marks for in Summer 2015. At this point, Muhummed had now attempted and passed each element of his first year examinations. However, the LSE decided that as these attempts had not all taken place during the same examination period, he would retake all of them again at the next available opportunity - Summer 2016. ..Continued on Page 3