At UMass, cowards and sneaks

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

This is about stealing that has the state's imprimatur, about a state health care worker who offers students abortion pills, about a University of Massachusetts bursar with a yellow streak up his back, about a health facility that should be shut down, about a situation that should have been exposed months ago.

But I didn't want to rock the boat then. I didn't want to put my daughter at risk of not getting into the courses she needs to graduate. I didn't want to embarrass her. I still don't.

My oldest daughter is a senior at University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Last week her tuition bill arrived. In the long list of student fees, there it was - the mandatory undergraduate health fee. For next semester, the cost is $197.50. Last semester it was $185.25. I paid it then because I was being blackmailed. But I am not going to pay it now.

Last December, my daughter visited Health Services. A week before Christmas, she awakened in the middle of the night with severe stomach pains. Her roommate drove her to Health Services, where a nurse practitioner took her temperature and blood pressure and told her to come back in the morning for blood work.

She returned to her room, in acute pain. She waited until 9 a.m. Then her roommate drove her back to the clinic. After filling out some forms, she was sitting in a public area waiting for a doctor, when a Health Service's employee approached her and announced, "So you're here to take an M.A.P.?"

"What's an M.A.P.?" my daughter asked. The woman said,"It's a morning after pill." My daughter said no, she wasn't here for that and before she could explain what was wrong with her, the employee demanded: "So you're here for a pregnancy test then?"

"I'm here because I'm sick," my daughter said, then started to cry.

On the phone a few hours later, she was still crying.

"They treated me like a walking sexual disease, Mom, and I couldn't do anything about it. When I saw the doctor, the first thing she asked was if I had any sexual diseases. All I had was a stomach ache. I was so humiliated, but I was in so much pain I couldn't even leave."

I wrote to the Director of Nursing, describing what had happened, explaining that my daughter would not be using Health Services again, and informing her that I had deducted the compulsory health service fee from the tuition.

"I need to inform you that the student health fee is compulsory and mandated by state law and if the health fee is not paid, Lauren may have difficulty in registering for courses," Catherine Burbank wrote back.

I called Catherine Burbank. She suggested I phone the bursar, Robert Mishol. I did. He listened to my story and said that Lauren would be expelled from school if I did not pay the health services fee. "What do you think would happen if every parent just suddenly decided not to pay this fee?" he asked.

Health care would get better? I suggested. Young people wouldn't be treated like undesirables?

I told Mishol the clinic was wrong. The person who approached my daughter had no right to make the assumptions she did, no right to ask highly personal questions in a public place, and no right to offer her a drug whose use is legal only under very limited circumstances.

"There's nothing anybody can do about it," Mishol told me.

"You mean there's no one above you?" I asked.

"That's right," he said.

When I mentioned that the day they expelled my daughter, there would be a Herald photographer taking her picture as she moved out, he suggested that perhaps the vice-chancellor could help. He gave his word that he would not initiate expulsion until I had heard from her.

Mishol lied. The next thing I knew I was holding a letter informing me that my daughter had been "withdrawn" from the university.

I paid the $185.25 health fee. I paid the $25 late fee. If I hadn't, my daughter would have suffered even more.

But now it's tuition time again, and there's that fee. If I don't pay it by Aug. 7, Lauren's classes will be deleted by the computer, she won't be allowed back at school, and she won't graduate next June.

If I do pay it, I am supporting a clinic that demeans young women, provides inferior care, and brazenly breaks the law by offering an experimental abortion drug that is at best immoral and unsafe, and at worst in this case illegal.