Sample Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13
Fighting UCSD

After I left 6161 West Charleston Boulevard, life improved somewhat. My mother and father applied for me to the Social Security Administration for Supplemental Security Income (SSI). My psychiatrist with Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services (SNAMHS) had diagnosed that I suffer from schizoaffective disorder, a combination of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. It is the worst of both worlds. Not only do I have the extreme euphoria and severe depression of bipolar disorder, I also have the psychotic features of schizophrenia including auditory, visual, and tactile hallucinations. As I experienced at Las Vegas Mental Health Center that SNAMHS runs I often have delusions. This condition is largely under control today, but from about 1993 to 2008, I lived a nightmare.

I had left graduate school at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) with no money and no job. I wasn’t even sure if UCSD had granted me a master’s degree in physics. During my written qualifying examination at UCSD’s Department of Physics, I was so certain that I had failed, I just finished the physics problems I could do. I turned in my qualifying examination, packed all of my belongings, and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada to live with my parents.

I made a suicide attempt in January 2002 for a variety of reasons. My attempt to kill myself landed me in Las Vegas Mental Health Center. After the state mental hospital discharged me, I decided to find out the results of my Ph.D. qualifying examination from UCSD. I called Debra Bomar, the graduate student coordinator in the Department of Physics at UCSD.

“They gave you a master’s degree,” said Debra over the telephone. She explained that although I did not score high enough to continue graduate studies for a Ph.D. in physics, I had scored high enough to earn a master’s degree in physics. My parents and I celebrated by dining out at a local casino and having prime rib dinners. We all were overjoyed.

Debra helped me by sending the forms necessary to petition the university to confer on me the master’s degree. Soon, however, UCSD denied me the master’s degree due to a single requirement. I met all the other requirements including passing the extremely difficult Ph.D. qualifying examination at the level of Master of Science. That all important requirement I did not fulfill for the M.S. was the grade point average (GPA) requirement.

Most graduate schools including UCSD’s require a 3.0 GPA in order to confer an advanced degree such as an M.A., M.S., or Ph.D. I had earned a 2.76 GPA at UCSD, and thus the Graduate Division at UCSD denied me the master’s degree.

I attempted to appeal the denial of the master’s degree on the grounds that my GPA did not reflect my competence in the field of physics. My success on the Ph.D. qualifying examination showed my true competence in physics. My GPA, on the other hand, resulted from my disability, schizoaffective disorder. In spite of it I still passed the exam at the M.S. level. Yet, Dr. Richard Attiyeh, Dean of the of the Office of Graduate Studies and Research (OGSR) at UCSD stilled denied my claim to an M.S. in physics.

The whole affair smelled like discrimination against the disabled. I filed a formal complaint against UCSD with the United States Department of Education under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). Under ADA, I alleged that UCSD discriminated against me due to my disability in its denial of my petition for a Master of Science degree in physics. However, neither UCSD nor the Department of Education were convinced by my arguments. The Department of Education upheld UCSD’s denial of a master’s degree.