Proliferation of "emotional support animals"

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Last year, there was one registered support animal on Yale’s campus, a kitten named Sawa. There are now 14 — a number that Sarah Chang, associate director of the Resource Office on Disabilities, expects to rise.

“If what has played out at other schools is true, then yes, [there will be] a lot more,” Chang said. “I do think we’re going to see a large increase in numbers, definitely.”

Emotional support animals require no training. They don’t even have to be dogs. Their purpose is to provide a therapeutic benefit through companionship. At Yale, there are emotional support dogs, emotional support cats and even an emotional support hedgehog. All members of the class of 2021 were asked on the first-year housing survey whether they would be agreeable to sharing a suite with a student who has an emotional support animal or service animal.

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Still, despite the increase in the number of such animals, there is little scientific evidence to support their impact on humans, according to Molly Crossman GRD ’19, a Yale doctoral student in psychology who has studied the mental health benefits of people’s interactions with animals.

“There isn’t research that speaks directly to emotional support animals. There’s little directly on that that I’m aware of,” Crossman said. “Although we generally agree that science informs policy, often it just doesn’t work out like that.”

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Yale and colleges across the country have adopted policies that allow emotional support animals — not necessarily because the science backs it up, but because the schools have to, in order to comply with the Fair Housing Act. The act states that “persons with disabilities may request a reasonable accommodation for any service animal, including an emotional support animal.”

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination based on disability. “Those two laws are basically the reason we weren’t inspired to create the program,” Chang explained. “We were mandated to create the program.

All universities have to follow those laws.” Violating the laws can be costly. In 2013, Grand Valley State University paid $40,000 in a settlement after a student sued the university for preventing her from keeping an emotional support guinea pig on campus. Two years later, two students received $140,000 in a settlement with the University of Nebraska at Kearney after they were denied “reasonable accommodations” to keep two emotional support dogs. A similar suit at Kent State University cost the school $145,000 the following year.

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