The University of Wisconsin has opened a formal investigation to determine whether the Division of Continuing Studies (DCS) improperly discriminated against a student with disabilities by excluding her from a summer residential program last summer, Madison365 has learned.
According to a June 9 letter from UW Civil Rights and Compliance Investigator Emily Stenhoff obtained by Madison356, DCS Associate Dean Aphra Mednick may have violated University of Wisconsin policy “by engaging in prohibited discrimination on the basis of disability.”
As Madison365 reported last summer, Nikhita (Kitty) Steward-Trivedi was enrolled in a three-week Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) course in art and activism. She lives with Goltz Syndrome, an exceedingly rare genetic condition characterized by abnormalities in the skin, limbs and eyes, and potentially other systems. She is vision-impaired and legally blind in one eye, and had the lower part of one leg amputated as an infant. As a result, she has a prosthetic leg, and sometimes uses a wheelchair to get around.
An aspiring animator, Steward-Trivedi, 14 at the time, enrolled in the ALP that was set to run in July 2024. Her mother, Lina Trivedi, said she visited the campus and residence hall to ensure they could accommodate Kitty; further, they say program organizers and instructors told them that Kitty could have an aide in the classroom with her to assist. However, the McBurney Disability Resource Center could not provide that aide, as it only serves enrolled UW students, unless a program hosting guests formally requests assistance. Since the DCS never requested assistance from McBurney, Trivedi said, she arranged for another local agency to provide an aide.
Still, Mednick wrote to Trivedi on June 28, 2024, two days before the program was to begin, that the school could not, in fact, accommodate the classroom aide, and that Kitty would be unenrolled from the program.
Trivedi and Kitty came to campus anyway, protesting outside the DeJope Residence Hall every day for those three weeks. But that didn’t feel like enough.
“By the end of last summer, Kitty was depressed. Her confidence was shattered,” Trivedi said. “I didn’t want Kitty to feel like she’s losing power because her grievances are not being acknowledged.
Trivedi later filed open records requests and made more visits to campus, and filed a 42-page complaint on April 1.
“I reached out to Aphra before I filed a complaint,” she said in an interview this week. “I asked, ‘What changes have you made?’ … And the long email (in response) was basically reiterating what their policy was last summer. So basically nothing has changed.”
She said Mednick reached out in February to talk about having Kitty join the ALP in 2025. Kitty was not interested, and Trivedi wasn’t confident it would work out even with additional time to prepare.
“I don’t trust any of them to actually put the effort that’s needed to understand why we need what we need,” she said. “Time is one factor. But then, if someone doesn’t really have the willingness to be inclusive to begin with, then all the time in the world isn’t going to really make a difference.”
Trivedi said the Office of Compliance interviewed her and Kitty and asked for contact information for any witnesses. And on June 9, the office let her know that the allegations warranted a formal investigation.
A University of Wisconsin spokesman declined to comment on the potential timeline of the investigation or the potential outcomes. The Office of Compliance website says the office’s goal is to complete investigations as soon as possible, but “the length of an investigation may be impacted by many factors including the complexity of the allegations, the availability of the complainant, the respondent, and witnesses, and timeliness in providing materials needed to resolve the investigation.”
Trivedi said that in the year since she was excluded from the UW program, Kitty has participated in four different college and pre-college programs, two of which had her staying on campus, and all of which were able to work with their campus disability resource centers to accommodate Kitty and her disabilities.
In fact, Kitty is currently earning college credit at the College of DuPage by making a short stop-motion animation film – using American Girl dolls – to portray her experience of being excluded from the UW program. She has just started creating some test shots for the film, which is called “Reverse Ableism.”
Trivedi said she doesn’t necessarily want Mednick to lose her job or even be disciplined. She wants to see policy change to ensure kids with disabilities aren’t excluded in the future – including a change to allow guests on campus to access McBurney Disability Resource Center resources directly.
“What we wanted… was for them to make changes so that if someone comes along that’s needing the accommodations at the level that Kitty needed, they can access the McBurney Disability Resource Center,” she said. “I would hope that they would re-explore this policy issue.”
