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Under the Fair Housing Act, college students who have disabilities
and documentation from a health or mental health provider stating that
they would benefit from having an emotional support animal may request
permission to have their ESA live with them on campus.
Benefits of Pets and Animal-Assisted Interventions for Students
There are a diverse range of policies related to pets in residence halls. For example,
the University of Illinois and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) allow
students to live on campus with their pets (Pittman, 2020), while the vast majority of
U.S. colleges and universities do not (Study International, 2020). Having a pet in the
residence hall can ease the transition to college, as many incoming students with pets
at home consider them to be an integral part of their lives, helpful both for reducing
stress and providing comfort (Adamle et al., 2009; Highfill & Goodman-Wilson, 2017).
Using a community sample recruited from a university listserv, McConnell and
colleagues (2011) found that pet owners reported higher self-esteem, less loneliness,
and better physical fitness than did non-pet owners and acknowledged that pets supplemented
their social needs. As more and more students are asking to be allowed to
have their pets in residence halls (Polking et al., 2017), there continue to be concerns
about negative impacts such as animal phobias, allergies, potential damage to property,
noise, disputes, and dog bites (e.g., Yamamoto & Hart, 2019).
In colleges and universities where pets are not allowed, many have introduced
animal-assisted interventions (AAI) using specially trained dogs and their handlers.
Interacting with AAI dogs provided enjoyment (Pendry et al., 2019) and high stress
relief (House et al., 2018), and participants were more willing to seek help from the
counseling center (House et al., 2018) and reported decreased anxiety and loneliness
after interacting with dogs (Stewart et al., 2014).
College Students and Emotional Support Animals
Research related to ESAs and college students is limited, and much of it focuses on
relevant court cases and guidelines for accommodating ESAs on campus (e.g., Bewley,
2015; Von Bergen, 2015). For example, several describe the court case involving the
University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK), which initially refused to allow students to
have their emotional support animals in the residence hall. In this case, a civil rights
lawsuit was filed, and a settlement was reached (U.S. Department of Justice, 2015): UNK
was ordered to cease discriminating against people with disabilities and to develop policies
and procedures to start providing reasonable accommodations for students with
emotional support animals. UNK also agreed to pay $140,000 to a settlement fund for
the two students involved in the case. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (2020) has subsequently issued a guidance statement explicitly clarifying
that the Fair Housing Act covers residence halls and other types of congregate housing.
Volume 49, No. 2 * 2023 89

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