by Libby Hannon
A
reminder from the United States Department of Justice to residential property
managers about assistance animals sent campus housing departments into a panic in 2015.
The gist of the Frequently Asked Questions guide was
that, yes, college and university residences were required to provide “reasonable”
accommodations for animals that “provide emotional support.”
At the time,
I was a brand new live-in professional only marginally aware of what an emotional
support animal (ESA) even was, let alone what my responsibilities were in
regards to them. So perhaps it was fate that in the same year when new policies
for residents were being drafted, I would meet my own future ESA. Our first
introduction was actually an intervention during an attempted policy violation.
I approached a group of students clustered in the hall lobby and cooing around
a ball of black fluff. “You know you can’t bring that in here,” I reminded the
would-be cat smugglers. The force of their collective gaze was overwhelming as
I listened to their story of the kitten being rescued from the blazing hot asphalt
and concrete wasteland of the local superstore parking lot. “You won’t make us
take her back, will you?” they pleaded. I sighed and promised to hold on to her
until the holidays. That was nearly six years ago, and Jiji is still with me.
But Jiji the
cat wasn’t an ESA. Not yet. And why should she be? After all, I knew nearly
nothing about the statutes and legal protections of ESAs. All I understood was
that sometimes students would bring animals into the hall, and unless I wanted
someone’s parent to call and threaten to sue, I’d better not ask questions.
For the
following two years, Jiji grew up. She had vet bills, including one for what
the vet called “the worst case of intestinal parasites I’ve ever seen.” She had
to adjust to my sleep schedule (it was an extended process). Sometimes she’d
fall into the bathtub while I was running the water. She learned how to open
the cabinet doors. Perhaps most infamously, one night she escaped my resident
director apartment and slid into the library drop box in the hall lobby and got
stuck. The security guard on call had to cut the lock off after he stopped
laughing.
Before long,
as is usually the case for live-in staff, it was time for me to move on to a
new job in a new city. I received a new position that was also live-in. It was a
bigger building with more responsibilities, but there was no established pet
policy for staff. With lots of promises that one would be in place soon, I sent
Jiji off to live with my parents. My new colleagues informed me that there had
been no answer about the pet policy for at least three years, but I remained
optimistic. Soon, though, the optimism was harder to maintain in a high
conduct, high student need residence hall. There was no furry presence at my
ankles to greet me in the evenings. There was no morning cuddle, and there was
no after-dinner game of tag. Still, I had a supportive supervisor, a welcoming
student staff, and campus partners who were truly invested in the students in
the hall. I could wait.
A few months
into the job, I interviewed a charming sophomore for a desk position that started
the next semester. As soon as she walked out of the office, I sent a message to
our budget manager. “What a rock star. How fast can we hire her?” I asked. Less
than 48 hours later, I found the student in her room, deceased. She had been
packing to depart for winter break when she became acutely ill from a new
medication. Her passing was both surreal and cruel. There are a handful of
fragments I can remember from that afternoon. There was the first phone call
and later a third. I remember watching the construction across the street out
of the enormous glass kitchen windows. I remember that the coroner, when she
arrived, asked me for a tampon and I numbly complied. But residence life stops
for neither death nor grief. Students still had to check out for winter, the
hall had to be walked, the rooms inspected, and the paperwork was piling up.
The counselor
at the employee wellness program was actually the first person to suggest the
possibility of Jiji’s return as an official ESA. It took two months before I
was able to sit down with a therapist. During our first session I showed her
pictures of my cat curled around my shoulders. “Will you provide documentation
for an ESA?” I asked, expecting to start the cogs turning on a more complicated
and lengthy administrative process of red tape.
“Sure, that
sounds like a very reasonable request.” Despite my immediate relief, I’d been
expecting additional questions. How did I plan to manage my cat with my work?
What does emotional relief look and feel like to me? What would my plans be if
Jiji became ill? Would I be mentally well enough to ensure that she received
veterinary treatment? Was I financially stable enough to provide for a vet
bill? What charges could I be held accountable for if there were damages to my
apartment? And, most importantly, in what ways could I explicate the connection
between cat comfort and my direct mental health?
Relieved to
know that Jiji was going to be added to the growing list of ESAs on campuses
across the nation, I didn’t push my luck with any further questions. But I did
begin to think back on some of the more memorable ESA cases I had witnessed
over the years. There was the student who didn’t want to get rained on, so she
stood in the foyer and watched her dog wander around outside on its own. There
were cats that made the entire hallway stink of litter, leading to a floor
dispute. There was, perhaps most tragically, a situation in which a student
became so mentally unwell she stopped taking her dog out at all. When we
performed a wellness check, we discovered she’d been living amongst animal
waste for days. Not only was the student then faced with intensive inpatient
treatment, but she and her family were also responsible for thousands of dollars
in damages and cleaning fees.
Despite my
own status as an ESA owner, I failed to take any real analytical approach to
policy until one interaction with a student staff member. I watched this
student walk an exuberant puppy across campus one summer and learned he had been
approved by his therapist for an ESA and was planning on bringing the newly adopted
dog to campus living in the fall. I reminded him to turn in his paperwork and
continue to work on the dog’s behavioral skills so he’d be ready for
residential life. Three months later, I saw the student again, but no dog. When
I questioned him about the absence, the student replied, “Oh, he was a lot of
work and didn’t act right. So I sent him back.” As an administrator, I admit that I was relieved to avoid a new rowdy canine in residence. But while I recognized my RA had made a reasonable decision based on his own needs, I did wonder about the fate of the abandoned dog.
As I write
this, there are no guidelines or requirements for mental health professionals
regarding the prescription of ESAs. While the assumption has always been that
animal comfort benefits humans, the current research is limited. There are
websites that breathlessly report that assistance animals benefit mental
health, but the findings are underwhelming. None of the biological markers to
quantify stress reduction or happiness (a decrease in cortisol and an increase
in oxytocin, respectively) had any statistically significant value. Participants report that they are happier after owning an animal, but the
researchers cautioned against relying too heavily on such a vague system of
measurement, especially when the participants had the added benefit of having
their animal’s care paid for by the program.
Questions remain
that neither science nor law yet has the answers for. What is the difference
between prescribing an animal already under the patient’s care, versus a brand new
puppy? Does petting an animal under the supervision of an animal-assistive therapy
practitioner have the same outcome? How can a therapist or physician ensure
that the relationship between owner and animal is a healthy one, where the
patient’s well-being and the animal’s basic
needs are being considered? Without answers, campus housing remains in limbo,
though there are cases in New York and
Iowa currently that could provide additional guidance. Anecdotally, I can share that
Jiji is a four-footed salve for the psychological toll that my job can
sometimes take. I only hope that in the future we’ll see stronger evidence and
better recommendations to benefit our students as they navigate their campus
experiences.
"First Person" is a column that allows ACUHO-I members a chance to put a personal spin on a news story. Libby Hannon is the associate director of residential curriculum and LLCs at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond.