FIRST PERSON
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.