Students with learning disabilities, reasonable accommodations, and the rights of colleges and universities to establish and enforce academic standards: Guckenberger v. Boston University.

In 1996, students with learning disabilities enrolled at Boston University (BU) brought a class action lawsuit in U.S. district court claiming discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and other federal and state laws. In August 1997, federal district court Judge Patti B. Saris found that, in a number of significant respects, BU had violated the students' rights under the ADA and related laws. The class of students with learning disabilities-individuals with attention deficit disorder (ADD)/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other learning disorders such as dyslexia-alleged that BU had discriminated against them by establishing unreasonable eligibility criteria for qualifying as a student with a disability, not providing reasonable procedures for evaluating their requests for academic accommodations, and instituting a blanket policy precluding course substitutions in foreign language and mathematics as academic accommodations. The BU case is illustrative of the national debate about the rights of qualified students with learning disabilities to receive academic accommodations and the rights of colleges and universities to establish academic standards. Yet the circumstances surrounding the BU case do not exist only within ivory tower walls. Rather, they are part of a growing ideology that, either knowingly or unknowingly, perpetuates attitudinal barriers and