Would-be chef in state stew

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

Tracey Newhart WILL get into Johnson and Wales. The powers that be will eventually see the light, because the light, in this case, is unflattering and neither the Commonwealth of Massachusetts nor Rhode Island's premier culinary arts school wants to be seen as the bad guy, keeping a young woman who has tried her hardest from fulfilling her dream.

Newhart is 21 and an award-winning cook. She wants to go to Johnson and Wales because to succeed in business these days, you have to attend an overpriced college and earn a diploma to hang on a wall so the whole world will know you ARE somebody.

It's a game we play. We matriculate. We get a degree. Therefore, we are.

Newhart has Down syndrome, which means she's had more than a few challenges in her 21 years. Many have been the real thing. But this one is a mean-spirited, manufactured bureaucratic hoop that is not only unnecessary but cruel.

Johnson and Wales' Dean of Admissions, Maureen Dumas, has denied Tracey Newhart's application to the culinary college on the basis that Tracey's diploma isn't certified by the state of Massachusetts.

"We're going to go by what the Department of Ed says is a diploma, and I think that's typical of any school," Dumas told Herald reporter Kevin Rothstein.

Dumas needs to put down the paperwork and look up from her desk at the real person whose life her actions are decimating.

Tracey Newhart is smart and ambitious. She graduated from high school. She aced her classes. The only thing she failed to do was pass the state-required MCAS exam - not because she's lazy but because Down syndrome makes it difficult for her to navigate such tests.

Would the state require a deaf student to differentiate between Mozart and Beethoven? A blind student to discuss the hues in a Picasso? A paralyzed student to stand in order to be rewarded a diploma?

Dumas' refusal to accept Newhart's high school diploma is matched in its arrogance only by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' rigid refusal to give Tracey a state certified diploma.

My granddaughter has Down syndrome, too. She was born just seven months ago, so we're new to this game. But already our world is divided into the people who know Lucy and know what she can do and the "experts" who don't know her at all but are full of contradictory predictions.

When she was born, well-meaning friends gave us books about Down syndrome complete with facts and charts and graphs of motor skills and developmental milestones. This information was intended to allay our fears, but it only added to them. The books pigeonhole and stereotype and as much as they try to encourage, they discourage. But in the end they tell you only that your child is different.

All her life, Tracey Newhart has had to deal with her differences and the diminished expectations of people who don't know her. She has succeeded because of the people who know her and in spite of the people who don't.

The experts this time are a college known for teaching hospitality, of all things, whose admissions guidelines clearly say that a "high school diploma OR EQUIVALENT" is required. And state officials who are so fixated on numbers that they can't see the harm they're doing.

Denying a college education to a young woman who has worked harder than most students ever will is mindlessly bureaucratic. The powers that be need to get off their high horse and fix this unnecessary wrong.