Ole Miss drops GPA exceptions for rush

[LAblondeGPhi]

I'm going to throw my support for the side that says this is NOT discrimination against students with learning disabilities. I am also of the opinion that if you have a GPA below 2.5 coming into college, there are some serious concerns about her ability to handle college academics.

Now, I empathize and understand the struggles associated with learning disabilities, but are there not varying levels of learning disabilities? Are there not some students who struggle and manage to get decent grades? Are there not students who seek treatment who get great grades, but with perhaps a little more effort than others? Absolutely. To lump all students with learning disabilities into one category seems unfair for some, and like an excuse for others. I would be money that there are plenty of students with a diagnosis and a decent GPA going through recruitment.

Another item I'd like clarified in this discussion is how Ole Miss handles their students with learning disabiltites. Do they give them a GPA break or exemption? Do they give them extra time on the tests or less coursework? What is the standard by which the university measures the success/acheivement of these special needs students? Shouldn't that be an allowable standard that Panhellenic could follow? Should these students' GPAs not get counted for their chapters' average GPA?

Perhaps this GPA requirement is best served on a case-by-case basis by Panhellenic. If you get diagnosed by something 2 weeks before the recruitment application forms are due.. maybe that would be a little fishy. There are plenty of doctors who have good intentions, are family friends, or are getting some pressure to help a good kid out by giving a diagnosis. If you have clearly been struggling with this for years and the university will give you certain GPA leeway, then fine. I do think there can be a certain culture of overdiagnosis and using ADD, ADHD, or others as a crutch when the problem may be something else.

To say that this is blanket discrimination, I think, is being oversensitive. There are many standards and minimum expectations set by the campus Panhellenics, NPC and by individual chapters, and if a chapter (or the Greek system as a whole) is going to be penalized (whether actually or by perception) for GPAs, then it's in their best intersted to uphold those standards. My point has a caveat if the university has specific GPA exceptions for these students.