Hershey school rejects HIV-positive Pa. boy

Hershey school rejects HIV-positive Pa. boy

news.yahoo.com

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A private boarding school connected with the Hershey chocolate company says it was trying to protect other students when it denied admission to a Philadelphia-area teenager because he is HIV-positive.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
seattletimes.nwsource.com
www2.ed.gov
www.ada.gov

Really? Seriously?? In this day and age most educated adults know that HIV and AIDS are not spread through casual contact.

"School officials acknowledged that the 13-year-old boy was denied admission because of his medical condition."

"Congress amended the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2008 to reaffirm that HIV is a qualified disability entitled to accommodation by public and private schools,"

This is clearly a violation of this child rights. Despite the fact that this is a private school, they are still held to the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act and hence, I suspect they are going to lose in the suite that has been filed.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

it's a private school. they can do whatever they want.

reply to post by Stryc9nine


Not according to the law. This is laid out in the second post.

Pretty sure I won't be eating hersheys chocolate any time soon. This is just astonishing....I didn't think it was 1985 anymore.

reply to post by DJDigitalGem


Being HIV+ myself, I read this with great sadness and anger. Today, Dec. 01, 2011 is World AIDS Day. I spent the day fighting illiterate uneducated so and so's and I hope I was able to AT LEAST make ONE doubt his stance enough to do his own research. (BTW, for those that may offer me sympathy it's OK. I am at PEACE with it and I am a better person for it. And those that want to say bad things about me and my fate, take it up with YOUR creator. You're just making me pity you more. But as long as you're reacting, their may be hope)

I pray for this child and KNOW Mr. Hershey would not approve of this treatment.

hmmmm, being that this is PA, i am not surprised although i do wonder, is the school's medical stance really relevant to the 13yr olds HIV status or perhaps maybe his Puberty status ??

he may manage his medical symptoms well enough but is he potentially a direct danger to others in a closed, sequestered environment ??
i hate to say it, but it is a valid question especially in such a setting.

So now not only does this child have to live with the fact that he has HIV. He has to live with be stigmatized, by a school who does not know better.

Maybe that school should re-educate its staff first before they go around discriminating against individuals.

But in this day and age it does not surprise me that there is still those out there who have no clue what so ever.

Surely this is a purely financial decision because they fear that other parents will remove their children from the school rather then risk having their child infected however small that risk would be.

Holy crap! Did I just travel back in time to 1978?

Wait, sine "toilet seat transmission" is complete crap maybe this is a round-about way of them admitting to rampant student orgies or teacher-student molestation or widespread intravenous drug use or something.

Well i'm sure that their fears do not stem from "Casual" contact, so not sure why that was mentioned
In any case, this is a private school and they should be able to do what they want

Yes I read the second post about the ammendment to the disabilities act, that's why I said "Should"

There are alot of immoral laws out there
You may say this is immoral too, but it's a private school and there is no morality in anything done through force
From entitlements to forcing private organizations to do whatever

This would have been fine if the school had not blatantly said that he was denied because of being HIV+ . They should have just said "denied" rather than "denied because you have HIV." These people are a bunch of ignorant fools. Maybe he didn't get it from casual sex, he could have been raped, or gotten a faulty blood transfusion, or maybe a cheap tattoo. While casual sex is most likely, there is still a chance at the other possibilities.

WHy did they disclose the fact that he had HIV in the first place? Do schools in the US have the authority to ask for full medical records along with test scores?

Seems a bit silly. In any case as stated this isn't 1978, but the school is a private institution, it can pick and choose who it wants to admit. It's kind of dumb for them to say it's because he's HIV positive, that's clearly discrimination.

Ohh well the kid's parents will make a good dollar on the law suit and they can home school him or put him in a better school.

~Keeper

Ohh well the kid's parents will make a good dollar on the law suit and they can home school him or put him in a better school.

He may not have parents. Milton Hershey and his wife Catherine Started the school for orphaned and neglected boys in 1909. The school operates from a trust endowed by Milton and Catherine. The school has assets in excess of 7 billion dollars today.

I don't believe that Hershey Food Corporation has any connection with the school other than sharing the name.
Milton Hershey School Website

ETA: I think the school has made a big mistake here. I just wanted to clear things up about the Hershey Food connection.

Okay, I found another tidbit related to Hershey Foods Corporation.

The school owns 13 million shares of stock in the Hershey Foods Corporation (HSY) as of last year in February according to this site: Disclosure

So it seems that the school owns part of the Corporation, instead of the other way around.

the school is for kids with none or one parent... an orphanage in a way

the school did a service to the applicant...

he would have had a living nightmare living at the school, as he would be a parriah at the place
he would have been ostracized and treated like the 'untouchables' in India....


him being 13 and graduating at ~19 would have been 6 years of hell for the applicant young man


i went to the school for 8 years when they had a bunch of dairy farms as 'homes' for the boys
learned the printing trade while in classes
i hear it is now co-ed schooling

This is horrid. I don't think being a private organization should give you the freedom to make a sick boy feel even worse BECAUSE he is sick.

As horrid as it seems, this is a massive liability issue.

If any student that attends the school contracts HIV at any point during this boys tenure, the school would have a problem. A big problem. A big problem that could potentially cost millions.

If you want to blame anybody, blame sue happy culture.

This is a direct violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The school is about to get their butts handed to them by the Federal government. It is even illegal for them to ask about HIV diagnosis. Read more from the ADA website.

I can also see things from the school's perspective. HIV is incurable and eventually fatal, as well as being transmissible. I cannot think of any other disease meeting these qualifications that is not a quaranteenable disease. It also carries with it the social stigma of being the "gay disease", despite the fact that most sufferers of HIV are not gay. We can thank the MSM for that little bit of propaganda.

Oh, and before anyone breaks a sweat jumping to conclusions at the use of the word transmissible above, yes, HIV is transmissible through bodily fluid exchange. The virus is very easy to kill outside the body, making most casual contact relatively safe, but then again 13 y/o children are not known for cleanliness. There are multiple ways bodily fluid can be contacted, as in blood from cuts and scrapes, urination, or simply mucus from sneezing. Children of that age would be more likely to encounter bodily fluids from other children than would adults.

All that aside, the law is the law and is very specific on this issue. The school doesn't have a leg to stand on legally.

And finally, directed at the poster who admitted to having HIV above: I for one do not look down on you. HIV is a devastating disease, and one I pray will have a cure soon. All the best to you.

TheRedneck

reply to post by peck420


Do you ever read what you just write?

Go educate yourself with regards to HIV and the level of risks there is in being infected before you, post such trivial crap on here.

You have more chance in walking down across a road and being hit by a car than being infected. I swear some members in ATS,