Aruna Rajagopalan, the deaf student whose acceptance to the Saint Louis University School of Medicine was withdrawn in August, has filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights. A SLU grad and a pre-med scholar, Rajagopalan’s acceptance was withdrawn when a review board at SLU Med ruled that she could not meet the technical standards required of all medical students. After the incident, which happened only a few days before Rajagopalan was to begin attending classes, Interim Provost Joe Weixlmann, Ph.D., said that communication between the pre-med scholar’s program and SLU med could be improved.
Last week, Weixlmann said that he could not comment about Rajagopalan because he was told last Monday that she had filed the complaint. He said that since August he has made plans for a “task group” to examine a variety of ways to strengthen the program and medical school admissions. The group has not met yet, but it willinclude the dean of admissions at the medical school, Luther J. Willmore, the director of pre-professional health studies Donald Schreiweis, Dean Patricia Monteleone, Ph.D., and Dean Michael May, S.J.
Schriewies said that current “communication between Pre-Professional Health Studies and the School of Medicine is excellent.” He added that Wilmore is “very supportive and responsive to the needs of undergraduate premedical students, more so than any previous admissions director at SLU.”
The issue of relaying the technical standards to pre-med students as early as possible is important, said Schrieweiss, who explained that technical standards were developed by the Association of Medical Standards in the early 1970s in response to discrimination lawsuits brought against medical schools. “In the past month, I have met with Medical Scholars in groups and individually to discuss with them the issue of technical standards and the reason such standards exist.
“Certainly applicants to medical school have rights. There also exists a responsibility to patients that medical schools train physicians who are most able to serve patient needs.”
Rajagopalan said that she was not aware that, even with accommodations, she would not be able to meet SLU med’s technical standards. Now Rajagopalan is examining her options at other medical schools with different technical standards. Rajagopalan is determined to attend medical school, and asked, “Isn’t the fact that over 26 medical schools have admitted deaf students (along with the fact that) there are quite a number of deaf doctors currently practicing enough to (make you) believe that I can do it as well?”
As far as the issue of communication between the schools, Rajagopalan said she is supportive of this idea but added, “If the reason for these improvements is to indirectly prevent disabled students from entering into the medical scholars program, how is that an improvement from a disabled person’s perspective?”
