The pre-med scholar program at Saint Louis University is well known for its strict curriculum, which can lead to an enticing position: a spot in the SLU School of Medicine.
Aruna Rajagopalan jumped through the pre-med hoops for four years at SLU and was ready to begin attending med school classes when, two weeks ago, her acceptance was withdrawn. Rajagopalan is profoundly deaf, and according to Interim Provost Joe Wiexlmann, the school of medicine admissions board determined that her 95 percent hearing loss would prohibit her from meeting the technical standards required of all students at the school of medicine. For Rajagopalan, the withdrawal of her acceptance was sudden and unexpected.
Med school classes began on Aug. 12, and Rajagopalan received word of her rejection on Aug. 6.
She scheduled a meeting with the director of admissions, Luther Willmore, on Aug. 2, to discuss accommodations for the upcoming orientation week. As an undergrad, she had excelled in class, reading professors’ lips and using notes typed by an interpreter who would accompany her to class. Rajagopalan and her family had predicted the challenges med school would pose and researched apparatus to aid her, such as an amplified stethoscope with a visual monitor.
Rajagopalan said that she showed Willmore her research at their meeting and that he told her that he would need to further evaluate the information.
“Then he sternly ordered me not to go to the white coat ceremony on Monday,” she said. The ceremony is part of orientation. “That came out of nowhere, and they never even implied that they were going to take back my admittance.”
The board met and determined that even with the most advanced medical tools and accommodations, Rajagopalan would not be able to meet SLU’s technical standards. Rajagopalan says she has been aware of these standards and checked off a box on her formal application indicating that she met them, including being able to “perform problem-solving tasks quickly and efficiently in an environment that may change rapidly, without warning or in unpredictable ways.” The other standards include being able to communicate effectively and efficiently and performing a wide array of diagnostic procedures.
Wiexlmann stated that Rajagopalan had been only provisionally accepted. “When it became clear, which it had not been, to the admission committee, that she needed accommodations that could not be made, they were, in turn, not able to allow her to be part of the entering class.”
Rajagopalan, however, said that she had received her official letter of acceptance in January and that she was not aware of any provisions to her acceptance, other than matriculation and attendance of the first week of classes.
Wiexlmann also said that the board had been aware of her disability, through her application and interviews as an undergrad, but that they did not know about her disability’s “precise nature.”
“It was no secret,” said Rajagopalan. She was interviewed by a doctor at the med school when she was an undergrad junior at SLU who, according to her, was enthusiastic about her ambitions to be a doctor. Her advisors in the pre-med program included Dr. Schrieweiss, the director of the Pre-Professional Health Studies program.
Though Schrieweiss could not be reached for comment, his assistant, Rich Fanker, said that typically counselors “would tell students with disabilities that they need to be prepared that their disability may be a problem and they should inquire with the medical school.” Fanker also added that it is up to the student to request accommodations.
Weixlmann admitted that communication between the pre-med program and the med school could be improved, and he added that the pre-med program is under the direction of the College of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to the lack of communication between the medical school and the pre-med scholars, it turns out that requesting accommodations is more complex than Rajagopalan may have realized. According to Weixlmann, the board was under the impression that it could not approach Rajagopalan and discuss her disability with her until she specifically asked for accommodations. Weixlmann said that Willmore had said it was his understanding that “it was not appropriate of him, according to the Americans with Disabilities Act” to ask Rajagopalan how she planned to make accommodations, when she had indicated on her application that she met the technical requirements.
“There are 45 deaf doctors in America now, at least. Twenty six medical schools have accepted deaf students, including Dartmouth,” Rajagopalan said. She is in contact with a number of these doctors via email, and they have advised her and written letters to the dean of admissions at SLU. Rajagopalan said she believes she can meet these requirements with the appropriate accommodations. But Weixlman said, “She needed to get to a point where she could function without a translator.”
According to Weixlman, the majority of medical schools require that a student must be able to perform in a curriculum with a broad range of settings, including emergency and critical care. Therefore students with certain physical limitations may risk the safety of the patients if they cannot respond quickly enough. “If patient safety was a fear for them,” said Rajagopalan, “why would there be practicing (deaf) doctors right now?
“The deaf community wants people to be informed that there are other methods for achieving the same goal, like using the amplified stethoscope with a visual display. There’s a blind student who graduated from med school at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and personally I thought ‘How could a blind doctor practice safely,’ but that’s part of my own narrow-mindedness.”
Weixlmann attributes fear and misinterpretation of the ADA regulations to the faculty’s hesitation to simply ask Rajagopalan how she planned on meeting SLU Med School’s standards. He said, “The horrible irony is that the ADA was created to help people like Aruna, but the admissions committee, knowing she has this impairment, and having questions about her abilities to meet the technical standards, but believing they are acting within a legal constraint, did not ask her how she was going to meet the standards.”
Rajagopalan says that the main reason she chose to attend SLU undergrad was the pre-med scholar program. “I would have chosen a more accepting medical school had I known this would be a problem.” In the pre-med program, students aren’t allowed to apply to other schools and are told that the MCAT is not a necessity and may even hinder their studies. She said that she was “kind of glad” she found out this way because now she knows she was rejected not because of her ability, but because of her disability.
