Weinberg first-year Jeremy Tam said he experiences anxiety when he holds in his involuntary tics, especially in front of others.

Despite the challenges that come with his Tourette syndrome, he still tried living with a roommate during his first year at Northwestern. He eventually realized he required his own room in order to live comfortably.

“I need a place to let those tics out, to feel comfortable, to relax,” Tam said. “That’s super important for my mental health, for my overall academic performance and generally to make me be me.”

For the upcoming school year, Tam applied for housing accommodations through AccessibleNU, the University service that manages such requests, to live in a single room.

He said he felt he had adequately explained his reasoning, along with submitting a doctor’s note and a neurologist’s letter supporting his separate academic accommodations.

He did not anticipate that ANU would reject his request, or that he would have to submit a similar note from his doctor again.

“I wasn’t exactly sure why I needed to provide another one because it’s not like my Tourette’s went away,” Tam said.

Despite the initial rejection, Tam ultimately acquired the accommodations he wanted. But he is just one student who said they have experienced administrative hurdles when seeking housing accommodations.  

ANU denies accommodations, requests additional information from students

McCormick sophomore Emma, who requested to be identified by only her first name due to privacy concerns, has Crohn’s disease and has previously been approved for accommodations for a single room with a private bathroom.

For the upcoming school year, she said she was assigned a room that did not have its own bathroom, which would have forced her to use a communal bathroom.

Another McCormick sophomore, who requested anonymity to privacy concerns and out of fear of retaliation from ANU, said she applied for accommodations for the upcoming year. She said that because a section of the accommodation form did not require documentation, she submitted the application under the assumption that ANU would request paperwork if it was necessary.

Due to ADHD, depression, asthma and other respiratory complications, she said she applied for a single room in a dorm where she could clean her air unit. She also wanted a dorm where she did not need to go up more than one flight of stairs to reach her room, as that would trigger her breathing difficulties.

But she said she received an email from ANU stating that the documentation she had provided did not sufficiently explain the rate and intensity of her symptoms.

As she plans to study abroad the next academic year, she cannot apply for a housing contract until she returns to campus, when the selection of available rooms will be limited. She said that uncertainty compounds her stress surrounding her living situation.  

“That seems like a very huge risk to just assume that I will be put into a dorm that will work for my needs physically and mentally,” she said.

Communication sophomore Seth Black-Diamond, who has Type 2 diabetes, said last year, he struggled with eating food from the dining hall due to his dietary issues.

In his accommodation request for the 2025-26 academic year, he requested a dorm that had a kitchen — to give him more control over his diet — and a bathroom close by.

He also requested a single due to his monitor, which he said he silenced multiple times last year because he was concerned it bothered his roommate when it went off.

“It was a lot of daily things that I needed in my life as a Type 2 diabetic that I had to shift, and that did not help with my health,” Black-Diamond said.

But he said ANU told him to submit multiple revised versions of a doctor’s note because his reasoning was not initially deemed clear enough to secure the accommodation.

“Accommodation decisions are based on how a disability affects a resident’s access to their living environment compared to a resident without a disability,” a University spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Daily. “A medical diagnosis or recommendation alone does not automatically result in a specific housing accommodation.”

Medill first-year Inaaya Firoz, who is Muslim, applied for religious accommodations to have a suite with “close and private access” to a bathroom so she could perform wudu, the Islamic ritual purification. She said she also wanted an all-female suite for religious reasons.

Firoz said she was initially assigned to a Kemper suite for next year that included male students.

The University did not respond to a request for comment about religious accommodations by the time of publication. 

Chains of emails required to advocate for granting accommodations

Emma said she struggled to get help when emailing both ANU and Residential Services, saying each directed her to the other group.

“Both sides, they told me, ‘Oh, we don’t handle that. Go ask the other group,’which is really confusing, because somebody picked my room,” Emma said. “So who was it?”

Residential Services then placed her in a single room, she said, but it did not fully match her preferences — especially since the bathroom, while private when she would use it, was open to everyone on the floor. She opted to enter the housing lottery instead.

Emma said that the lack of a consistent ANU adviser assigned to her made communication difficult. At one point, she said she was assigned a new adviser who left before she could meet them.

The second McCormick sophomore, after being told she needed to submit additional information, said she contacted doctors at home and on campus and provided the requested documentation. But she remained unsatisfied with the level of communication from ANU.

“It just seemed like no one was actually taking the time to consider them, and they were just trying to clear them from an inbox,” she said.

After submitting documentation, all of her accommodation requests were rejected again. The McCormick sophomore said it was for “basically the same reasons” as before. 

She said one response advised her to use public spaces like libraries to improve focus, which she found dismissive.

“For you to just automatically assume it’s because I can’t focus, because I said it was ADHD, is a little upsetting,” she said.

Eventually, she scheduled a meeting to clarify her situation. She said she was offered alternatives that had not been communicated over email. Her request for a dorm with a preferred air system and no more than one flight of stairs was approved, but the request for a single room was still denied, she said.

Firoz said when students are presented with an accommodation offer, they have a certain period of time to accept it. Her point of contact went on vacation during this window, she said.

She said Residential Services later told her that her placement in a co-ed suite arose due to an unintentional “booking error.” While she ultimately received what she requested, she still found the process frustrating.

“I just want a response,” Firoz said. “I’ve done everything that I need to do. I feel like it should be easy to navigate these sorts of things. It’s not like I’m the first person who’s ever applied for this sort of accommodation.”

Black-Diamond said he was not rejected outright, but that he had to repeatedly follow up to secure his accommodation.

The process included multiple revisions and resubmissions of similar doctors’ notes, he said.

“It felt pretty demeaning, to be honest,” Black-Diamond said. “As a student who was already doing so many other things and putting so much time and doing studies and my extracurriculars, having to take all this time to do this was really frustrating, considering they advertise themselves as a means of helping and as a means of being there for students.”

Students reflect on process struggles, hopes for communication improvements

Tam said he felt his housing situation was resolved quickly and that he “lucked out.” However, he said he still had many unanswered questions about the process.

“Why was my doctor’s note insufficient? Why did I need to get a new one? Why was what I originally described different from what I described in the email I sent?” Tam said.

He also said the process to apply for accommodations should be more accessible. He said it would be “wildly unfair” if students were not able to clearly articulate their needs, and that in-person interviews could help students better “advocate for themselves.”

The McCormick sophomore said she had to “keep poking” the University to address her concerns. There needed to be more communication and clarity throughout the process, she said.

She added that NU should change its processes to help students feel like their concerns are being adequately addressed.

“Going to this school is already stressful,” she said. “Having to deal with people who are supposed to be there to help you, and have it feel like they’re just not listening to you, is just awful.” 

Black-Diamond said ANU has assisted students with housing accommodations.

Still, he said he feels communication from ANU has room to improve.

“There’s so many strengths that they have,” Black-Diamond said. “But there’s also a lot of things that they lack, and this is one of those things — actually listening to their students who have valid needs and accommodations.”

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