April 11, 2024 | FEATURES | By Maddie Dimetrosky
Kyle Moriarty ‘25 leans back in a dorm room chair with a mug of steaming coffee and smiles as his kitten, Juice, paws at a string dangling from a cat tree. He scoops her up in his arms and cradles her on her back.
“She just chills in my lap. She doesn’t even care if you put her on her back. Maybe she does right now,” Kyle says, as Juice gets up to continue exploring. “She says ‘it’s playtime.’”
Juice is one of 23 approved emotional support animals on Colorado College’s campus, defined by Accessibility Resources, who provided the figure, saying, “an animal that is necessary to afford an individual with a mental health-related disability an equal opportunity to use and enjoy housing.”
Requests for animals on campus have risen over the years, reported Sara Rotunno who directs Accessibility Resources; that trend is a local snapshot of a broader picture as colleges grapple with how to adjust guidelines for pet ownership on college campuses nationwide.
Moriarty brought Juice to campus at the end of Winter Break, and he said the process was “surprisingly easy.” He met with Accessibility Resources, had a professional healthcare provider sign the paperwork, and had to wait until she was old enough to get all her vaccinations.
Moriarty said that the kitten has been hugely beneficial to his mental health.
“Even last night … I just laid down on the couch, and she came and just cuddled up right on my chest,” he said in an interview in his Edith Gaylord apartment in early February. “She’s also very good at helping bring people together. I noticed in the first semester my roommates and I were not necessarily the closest, but now that she’s here we all kind of like hang out here, play with her, watch TV, and everything.” He said the added work of caring for a pet is helpful because he has to get up to feed her and always has someone else to care for.
He’s not alone.
Eliza Blanning ‘26, who has an emotional support guinea pig named Bruce, described the animal’s impact on them as “immeasurable.” They said that Bruce acts as a roommate in their single and specifically helps with homesickness.
But for Blanning, the process of getting Bruce approved as an emotional support animal was difficult and frustrating. They started the process during Block 2, in September, and Bruce was not approved until January.
Rotunno, the Accessibility Resources director, says that having an emotional support animal is essentially part of a “treatment” program. Students need to provide vaccination information and contact information of someone else off campus who could act as a caregiver in the case of an emergency, as well as make sure the animal is not aggressive.
Rotunno also explained that her office typically denies a request if a student doesn’t have correct documentation showing that the pet is necessary or if they obtained documentation from an illegitimate website.
Despite the benefits students say animals provide, Colorado College has faced issues with pets on campus.
Rotunno said the Office of Housing and Residential Experience has had to bill students for furniture scratched by cats, for dogs exhibiting aggression, and for students not cleaning their cats’ litter boxes, leading to health and safety violations, not to mention plenty of complaints about smells. Accessibility Resources also worries about students leaving their pets unattended for unreasonable amounts of time over Block Breaks or when traveling.
Rotunno said she has even seen animals hinder students’ mental health.
Twice, she said, her office has responded to students whose dogs barked so incessantly when left unattended that the students stopped going to class to stay with them. Students are also responsible if a pet has any medical issues, leading to significant vet bills or having to deal with serious illness while at school. A dorm room isn’t the best place for a dog that can’t be left alone for hours when students are in class and labs.
Camden Olson, a service dog trainer at the National Institute of Canine Service and Training, spent almost two years convincing Princeton University to allow her to train a service dog on campus.
She said in a phone interview that her experience raising the dog was positive, but “it gets busy in college,” and she asked, “Are you able to focus on your studies and the dog? Because it is another being that you are responsible for.”
Olson believes emotional support animals have no standard for behavior or care, so it can be difficult to hold students accountable.
There are pet-friendly colleges in the United States. Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, as well as Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania, are known as two of the most pet-friendly colleges, according to their websites. Washington and Jefferson College offers pet-friendly residence halls, and at Eckerd College, any student can bring a small pet to campus as early as their first semester and a large pet to campus as early as their second semester.
Eckerd College even offers a graduation ceremony for pets leaving campus.
According to an interview with Justin Swank, assistant dean of students, in W and J news, “pet ownership often supports the spirit of the liberal arts education and teaches students responsibility and time management in ways they cannot find in the classroom.”
Both Blanning and Moriarty said that they think Colorado College could be more pet-friendly.
Moriarty said that there are strict rules surrounding where his cat Juice can be on campus. He said he would also like events on campus for pet owners to “build a stronger sense of community.”
Rotunno shares that she expects the colleges’ emotional support animal guidelines to change over time. As more students want to bring their pets to campus, she predicts, colleges may be thinking about how their policies might need to change.
Rotunno and Olson compared their expectations for the future of emotional support animals in college to how airlines used to be lenient yet changed their policies when “people took advantage of it and there were too many issues with ill-behaved animals.”
Apart from the 23 approved emotional support animals at CC, there are likely unapproved pets in campus housing. A student with pets who weren’t approved because they were unable to provide documentation said they were told by the Residential Life coordinator that they had 72 hours to remove them.
“Personally, I’m in full support of emotional support animals but … if something lives in a cage I don’t think you should need approval,” the student said.
Back in the Edith Gaylord apartment, Juice is watching the happenings of CC from the window.
“She makes school feel like a home,” Moriarty says.