I thought it might be worth summing up Anna's disability-in-academia saga in the context of NVU-Johnsons's stated policies.
So, she claimed to be completing and submitting undergraduate coursework from her hospital bed:
And she complained that she had to do this because she hated to ask for "special privileges" and her professors were only "...semi-understanding [unamused emoji, sad emoji, loud crying emoji]".
Later, Anna
explicitly claimed she did not file for disability accommodations because she did not want her professors to find out she was ill and go easy on her.
Of course, this does not make sense and it is not how things work in real life. In schools that rely heavily on short-term, part-time faculty, instructors typically have very little authority to waive deadlines or otherwise deviate from written policy. This is almost certainly why Anna's professors were only "semi-understanding," likely referring her concerns to a different administrative entity.
As others have noted, having a disability recognized by disabilities support services at a college or university tends to involve a great deal of paperwork and documentation. And depending on the school, this process can be a weirdly antagonistic pain in the ass, even in cases of obvious need.
At most schools,
including NVU-Johnson, students who have successfully completed the documentation process can choose to disclose their accommodations on a course-by-course basis, and may even choose to invoke these accommodations assignment-by-assignment. If the student opts for disclosure, all the professor hears is the specific accommodations they are required to provide. This is usually something along the lines of flexible deadlines, or sending exams to a learning center so they can be administered untimed or in a distraction-free environment.
At NVU-Johnson,
only students with documented disabilities may be allotted additional time for the completion of courses. If Anna had a documented disability on file, this would've been the easy and obvious way to handle her end-of-semester hospitalization.
Without a documented disability, Anna's ileostomy clearly falls under the umbrella of "serious mitigating circumstances."
This would've entitled her to take an Incomplete grade for the semester, and once she completed any outstanding coursework, she could appeal to have the I resolved to a traditional letter grade. This is different from being allotted additional time to complete the course, as she would not have been eligible to participate in commencement and would likely be required to pay an additional semesters' fees in order to resolve the I. It seems probable that Anna rejected the accommodations for which she was eligible, in favor of completing her very easy courses while hopped up on painkillers in her hospital bed.
In any case, all that is behind her. Now she is on a family vacation at a "super-duper fancy resort near the beach," wearing a cozy fleece jacket despite temperatures in the low 90s:
If Anna can restrain herself from posting bikini photos that showcase the poop bag, I will be really pleasantly surprised.
