SENATE, No. 711

SECTION 1.  I, Brian J. Coppola of 400 Merrimack Street, Methuen, Massachusetts of the county of Essex, do hereby petition that the Legislature, otherwise known as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, otherwise known as the General Court, sitting in assembly do hereby enact, pass, and adopt the following into law.

Be it enacted that any state or private college, receiving any governmental funding, including financial aid from the state of Massachusetts, through its students shall eliminate and or abdicate any accessible handicapped housing, including but not limited to dorm rooms, town houses, apartments and or whatever housing is deemed handicapped accessible from the colleges’ or university’s’ room lottery or meritocracy policies and must utilize a different set of policies to see to it that students with disabilities who need accessible housing are placed first and foremost by the college or university, before any other student.

Be it further enacted that after and only after disabled students needing accessible housing have been placed, any other student so wishing to reside in handicapped accessible housing must undergo sensitivity training to be provided by the college or university once before the academic year, running from September till June ends and once before the student moves into such housing at the beginning of each academic year.

Be it further enacted that during such sensitivity training, that as part of the sensitivity training that the other students so wishing to live in said designated handicapped accessible housing must meet and undergo an awareness of the student that they are going to be living with’s disabilities and the habitat of that person’s disabilities. Be it further enacted that the students so wishing to reside in handicapped accessible housing must also learn about other disabilities, the technology or adaptations that are used and some background information regarding the habitats of other disabilities.

Be it further enacted that upon the completion of both sensitivity trainings, that it shall be the responsibility of the college or university to certify that said students, besides students with disabilities so wishing to live in said designated handicapped accessible campus housing, has successfully attended and completed both sensitivity trainings.

Be it further enacted that upon the day of moving into such handicapped accessible on campus housing, that all students be handed a copy of all of the Massachusetts hazing laws including but not limited to the hazing statutes containing the penalties for hazing against a disabled person for the sole purpose of obtaining the housing for one’s self and his or her friends.

Be it further enacted that upon students’ moving into designated on campus handicapped accessible housing, all other students, with the exception of students so needing to be in handicapped accessible housing, students wishing to live some place else on campus shall let the director of campus housing know of this wish at any point during the semester or the academic year and or semester, by first placing a phone call to the director of campus housing and that said director of on campus housing shall meet with the students so making such request within twenty-four (24) hours of such phone call being placed to the director that so handles on campus housing placements. Be it further enacted that such request to relocate from designated handicapped housing shall be honored in writing within one (1) week of such appointment with the director of on campus housing and that such move shall be made within two (2) academic weeks of such appointment.

Be it further enacted that should there arise a concern of hazing, harassing, damaging, violence, or squalor to said designated handicapped housing, students either suspected, questioned or involved in such incidents of the said hazing, harassing, damaging, violence or the causing of squalor to such designated handicapped housing shall be removed from such handicapped accessible housing within seventy-two (72) hours of such complaint, suspicion, question, or involvement in such incidents of hazing, harassing, damaging, violence, and or the causing of squalor to the housing unit and placed into other non-handicapped housing for the remainder of the academic year and that pending investigations into hazing, harassing, damaging, violent behavior and or causing squalor to such handicapped accessible housing, said student(s) involved shall be restrained from visiting any designated handicapped accessible housing. Be it further enacted that any disabled student involved in an incident of hazing, harassing, damaging, violent behavior and or causing squalor conditions to designated handicapped accessible on campus housing shall remain in such housing pending the investigation of such incidents of hazing, harassing, damaging, violent behavior and or causing squalor to said housing, until it has been determined that such said actions so mentioned has taken place and that such disabled student(s) have been involved in said incidents of hazing, harassing, damaging, violent behavior and or causing such squalor to said housing. Be it further enacted that the same suspensions, fining, probationary periods, expulsion, and or whatever the college or university deems to be the appropriate, shall apply to disabled students, as it applies to non-disabled students.