[Alumni-chat] Letter to the National Alliance on Mental Illness

[alanbenard (alanbenard at pobox.com)]

Email to: Diane Chiddister, Editor, Yellow Springs News
CC: Antioch College Office of Admissions and Financial Aid Dean Jennifer Rhyner and Antioch College President Steven Lawry

Dear Ms. Chiddister:

Participants in the antiochians.org forum have asked if Antioch College President Steven Lawry -- as was reported in your story "College’s inconsistent support stymied admissions process" (Yellow Springs News, June 26, 2007) -- "addressed the admissions staff last year and requested that they recruit only students without mental health problems." The statement, written in your words, is sourced to "several employees."

Antioch Office of Admissions and Financial Aid Dean Jennifer Rhyner declined to comment for the article. There is no mention of an attempt to contact President Lawry in the article. Chancellor Toni Murdock also declined to comment directly to other issues regarding funding of the Antioch College Office of Admissions, but asked Antioch University spokesperson Mary Lou LaPierre to reply on her behalf, according to the article. 

I believe the Admissions staff members' allegations of discrimination against the mentally ill -- a protected class of people under the Americans with Disabilities Act -- are serious. Interested in bringing light to this issue, I emailed a letter to The National Alliance on Mental Illness, "the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to improving the lives of persons living with serious mental illness and their families [from the NAMI Web site]." I asked NAMI to review your article. 

My email to NAMI and subsequent discussion of your article and the Antioch staff member's allegations can be found at:
http://antiochians.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=19792&p=1 .

Participants at the antiochians.org forum have called your reporting and the Admissions staff members' statements into question because your multiple sources requested anonymity. I'm copying this message to Dean Rhyner and President Lawry and formally requesting, as an alumnus, that they respond to these reports of alleged preemptive exclusion of the mentally ill in the Antioch College admissions process. 

Permission to share your response would be appreciated.

Alan Benard, B.A. Antioch '92