University of Pennsylvania

A former employee of Penn’s Steinberg Conference Center filed a lawsuit against the University on Oct. 28 alleging discrimination, retaliation, and unlawful termination.

The suit, brought by plaintiff Yolanda Davis, alleged that the University violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by terminating her employment on the grounds of disability and race. It further claimed Davis was retaliated against for reporting her disability and requesting accommodations, and that Davis suffered disparate treatment, retaliation and a hostile work environment while employed at the Center.

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It also claimed that Davis’ employment was terminated because of her disability and race and in retaliation for reporting her disability and requesting accommodations — invoking rights protected in the Family and Medical Leave Act and ADA. It said that Davis suffers from chronic anxiety and that her anxiety qualifies as a disability under the ADA because it “substantially limits one or more major life activities including, thinking, concentrating, sleeping, and eating.”

The suit alleges that the defendants denied Davis’ request for reasonable accommodation and medical leave in accordance with the Family and Medical Leave Act because they “did not consider chronic anxiety a real medical condition.”

I opened the presentation with a statement of my positioning: I’m a disabled survivor of state violence, and a Caribbean student of Black and Lebanese descent, with a perspective rooted in my experiences and the experiences of communities of which I’m a part. Then I named the problem: State violence targets disabled people, and state violence is disabling. State violence is the use of force against civilians, and it can include police or military violence, or even the ways social workers break families apart under the guise of “child welfare.” I cited examples. Here in Philadelphia, Walter Wallace was experiencing a mental health crisis when he was killed by the police. In Gaza, 10 children lose one or both of their legs every day to state violence carried out by the Israeli army in its United States-backed genocide of Palestinians.

For those who survive, the traumatic impact of state violence is often unacknowledged. Rather than offering therapeutic interventions, social workers regularly involve the state in disabled people’s lives through practices like mandated reporting and family policing. Parents with psychiatric disabilities are more than eight times more likely to have contact with the family policing system and 26 times more likely to have children removed from their homes. Using expressive arts therapy to support disabled people in creating mad maps, or wellness plans, to prepare for crises, can be a powerful intervention that supports agency, self expression, and self understanding without increasing the risk of state violence.

Just like other presenters, I closed my presentation by sharing how social workers can engage in advocacy to address the problem I had discussed. We can put an end to harmful practices in social work like mandated reporting, educate ourselves about the ways social work upholds oppressive systems like settler colonialism, and organize toward collective liberation.

My play therapy professor was not “unsafe” when I made my presentation on Zoom that day. Using this racist dog whistle, she recast herself — a white woman and professor — as the victim and me — a Black and Arab student — as a threat. My grades, my ability to finish the class, my ability to graduate on time were all in her hands. I had no power over this person; she had power over me.

Frankly, being disabled at Penn is humiliating and dehumanizing. The wording may be strong, but so is my frustration and so are this institution’s deficits. I am sick of having to fight tooth and nail for rights that other students do not even know they have. At the beginning of every semester, I email countless building administrators to please leave the wheelchair seat open, lest I have nowhere to sit. Regardless, I am not given an option to sit anywhere else on days I cannot walk; I cannot choose to sit next to my friends, or closer to the professor. I can never go to a building without looking up whether it has space for me.

As there is no system to assign accessible classrooms to those who need them, I occasionally have to request for professors to change the location. As it is at their discretion, even going to class is not a guarantee, no matter how required that class is for my degree. Neither is housing: Moving in this year, I found that an automatic door opener had not been installed in my room, which means I have to struggle to go inside my dorm every single day. As of this week, I still haven’t received updates beyond the fact that they’re working on it.

Students have expressed concern over allegations of discrimination within a master's program at the Perelman School of Medicine after the discovery of emails from administrators discussing underrepresented minority students.

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Multiple students who spoke with the DP expressed frustration with the investigation’s process and results. They contended that several scheduled town hall meetings for students to gain updates on the evaluation and to air grievances were abruptly canceled or held without advanced notice or remote options.

The students contended that — at one town hall meeting moderated by Meagher — she was “defensive,” deflected students’ questions, and interrupted students who raised their concerns. They also argued that Meagher focused more on the email’s intent and the reputational damage to Groeneveld rather than the impact on the wellbeing of URM students — which many students found upsetting.

In my case, it often felt that I would be left behind if I couldn’t keep up, that what happened to me was a problem that I had to figure out and deal with by myself, despite some of the help that should have been there. 

I didn’t feel like I could reach out to the Weingarten Center again to figure out who I could lean on for support, especially when the operator didn’t want to help the first time, so I never did. I believed that was the better option than being redirected to multiple different lines where I was told no one had any information to help me. No matter how much accessibility is made to seem like a “shared value”, it remains a personal burden when there’s no follow-through to ensure these services work.

In 2009, Ploeger received counseling from Alexander, who began his role as director of CAPS that year and retired in 2018. She alleged that during these counseling sessions, Alexander made inappropriate sexual advances, touching her at least once without consent. These advances led Ploeger to attempt suicide in 2009, after which Alexander allegedly told her to “go home and put a Band-Aid on it," according to her complaint.

Ploeger attempted suicide again in 2015 by overdosing on medication prescribed to her by Alexander. He allegedly wrote her another prescription following this attempt but did not direct her to further mental health treatment.

Ploeger reported the alleged misconduct to Alexander’s supervisor and then-Penn President Amy Gutmann in 2015. Alexander allegedly threatened her in response to these reports.