Assistance animals at QU
Upon slowly opening the frosted glass door to SC117, the first thing you will see is a golden retriever laying across the dark carpet, long hair flowing, just waiting to be pet. Tucker jerks his head up and gets to his feet. His first customer is here. Ben and Tucker have been exposed to Quinnipiac student’s from a young age and love to make visits during finals week for students seeking some stress relief. Slowly, more and more students fill the room and Tucker looks as if he is melting into the floor in bliss. However, once his brother, Ben arrives back from a walk around campus, this ‘diva’ steals the show.
There is no doubt that college students love dogs. Attend a softball game, you will find a few. However, what if you’re a student who wants to own a dog on campus or perhaps you feel as though you might need one? Emotional support and service animals have become popular remedies for those with disabilities and Quinnipiac is more than happy to accommodate those who choose to seek help through the use of an assistance animal.
Just ask Allison Roethke. Allison and her dog Nala have been living together at the York Hill campus. Allison is a communications student who is also on the women’s ice hockey team. Allison stated that prior to getting Nala at the end of her hockey season this year, she would spend large quantities of time napping or at the ice rink and was seeking more balance.
Roethke struggles with ADD and upon doing some research about dogs and ADD, she found that having a dog could help keep her on a schedule. Roethke explains she plans her day the night before, “I have to wake up, take her out, feed her, make my breakfast at the same time while she is eating and then I have class. I will go to class, put her in a crate and I will come back, take her for a walk and then one of my roommates will watch her when I go to workout. When I get back from workout I take her on a walk, we hangout or whatever.” Roethke said being in this sort of routine is an everyday thing and makes her feel better about her college experience.
Before Roethke made the long journey to South Carolina to get Nala, she had to get approved by the university to have an emotional support dog. Roethke talked with Matthew Cooper at the learning commons as well as the head of residential life to fill out paperwork on Nala.
Service and emotional support dogs all have paperwork and this in fact helps those who own either type of animal to get the animal on campus. However, Roethke says she's never been asked to show her documentation. When it comes to sporting events, Associate Athletic Director of Operations, Andrew Castagnola, believes there has been an increased number of dogs present. However, Castagnola does not mind, a lover of dogs himself, Castagnola states, “people show up outside the field, that's fine. The only issue we have is when they try to bring them into a building. Thats where pets aren’t allowed inside. If anyone shows up and it's a service animal or if they have identification, I’m not going to remove anybody from the site.”
Unfortunately, for Allison Roethke and Nala, emotional support dogs aren’t allowed in many places still. The two weren’t allowed inside the lacrosse stadium earlier this year during a game.
Castagnola believes that the increasing number of animals at games is mostly coming from individuals off campus or those who are not students. Animals are in fact allowed on campus as long as they are not in any confined area, like a building or stadium.
However, what about emotional support animals? They aren’t considered service animals and under Quinnipiac’s Pet Policy, they have their own set of guidelines.
Castagnola stated that for “emotional support dogs, the university hasn’t set a guideline yet.”
In order for those who use an emotional support dog, for the animal to be present on campus, they must be approved by the university prior.
If you’re an athlete, you might have noticed an email a few weeks back sent from your coaches. That email was sent on behalf of Andrew Castagnola, which he was distributed after the same email, containing the ‘pet policy,’ was disseminated to staff at the T.D. Bank Center.
The attached ‘pet policy’ of that email was similar to that of almost any university. The document states the scope of the policy, the statement and then a list of definitions.
Emotional Support animals and Service animals are each defined separately. The document states that “Students who have a documented disability that requires the assistance of a Service Animal are permitted to bring such Animals to campus.”
However in regards to emotional support animals, students are permitted to keep their animal in on-campus housing on a ‘case-by-case’ basis.
According to the US National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health, “The major differences between service dogs and ESAs revolve around their required training. While service dogs must be trained to perform specific tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, no such training is required for ESAs.”. Rather, the article stated, “ESAs may accomplish their task by providing companionship or alleviating loneliness.” Emotional support animals are owned pets that currently do not have certification or registration standards and thus restricts their access to public places.
On the second floor of quinnipiac’s athletic building sits, Amy Klopfenstein, assistant athletic director for academic support, sometimes with a purple puppy gate propped in her her doorway.
That purple gate holds back Max, the Morkie, from coming to lick your face. Klopfenstein states that she has seen, what she believes to be, an increased number of her athletes getting dogs for emotional support. Klopfenstein said she felt, “that was a positive thing for those students that need that type of support but it did definitely seem that it wasn’t that difficult to have that happen.”
As for the recent dissemination of the “pet policy” to student-athletes, Klopfenstein stated that “maybe some of those rules weren’t so clear to the students who were allowed those dogs. That was my assumption that the rules weren’t clear to those students allowed to have emotional support dogs on campus.”
As of now, Quinnipiac is still making policy for the increasing number of emotional support animals.