Goucher College recognizes the importance of service animals and emotional support animals to individuals with disabilities and has established requirements and guidelines concerning the presence of such animals on campus.

Service Animals

As noted by Maryland Department of Health:

Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability. Dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support do not qualify as service animals under the ADA.

Students seeking to bring their service animal to campus may be asked to participate in or submit the following:

• Intake meeting with the Office of Accessibility (OAS) to determine: What work or task has the animal been trained to perform? Is the service animal required because of a disability?
• Updated Vaccination records
• Animal Registration
  
  

Emotional Support Animals (ESA)

Students seeking approval to bring their emotional support animal in the residence halls must participate in and submit the following:

Information for new (including transfer) students

1. Submit an Accommodation Request for New Users to our Office of Accessibility via our Accommodate portal (register using your Goucher email only).  
2. Upload documentation from a licensed provider indicating diagnosis and justification of need for an ESA to our Accommodate portal. Examples of documentation include: neuropsych evaluations, support letters, and/or medical documentation.
3. Participate in an in person or virtual intake meeting with a member of our team (an invitation from OAS will be sent to the student's Goucher email).
4. After documentation is reviewed and the intake meeting has occurred, a decision letter will be sent, jointly, to the student and the Office of Residential Life (ORL) within a reasonable timeframe (typically 5 business days). 
5. Upon receipt of the decision letter, it is the student's responsibility to initiate a meeting with ORL (send an email to residentiallife@goucher.edu) to finalize ESA approval. This includes submission of updated vaccination records, responsibility and/or roommate agreements. 
6. After steps 1-5 are completed, the student's accommodations are formalized.

Information for returning students

If a student is already registered with OAS for academic accommodations but seeks to explore housing accommodations due to a justified need, please use the Accommodation Request for Returning Users to request a meeting with our team.

Please note, all additional accommodations require an intake meeting and receipt of documentation. 

ESA accommodations must be renewed each year and do not automatically roll over. Students will receive corresponce from OAS (via email) indicating how and when to renew. Animals may not be in residence prior to approval.

*In order to ensure that you receive appropriate accommodations, you must submit your fully completed accommodation request by March for Fall returning students, and by June for Fall new students. Students who are not enrolled for Fall and begin/return to Goucher for Spring, must submit their fully completed accommodation request by November. After these deadlines have passed, requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis for the academic year.

**The College does not discriminate in the provision of housing to students with disabilities. The College will provide comparable, convenient, and accessible housing to students with disabilities at the same cost as to others, and the College will make reasonable modifications to its housing policies, procedures, and practices when the modifications are necessary to avoid discrimination, unless the College can demonstrate that making the modifications would fundamentally alter the nature of the housing services provided by the College.