The "reasonable accommodation" for someone with suicidal/self-harmful thoughts and actions (active cutting) is sending them to a psych ward for treatment. Which they did.
If a person in a wheel chair had their legs bleeding out, would it be discrimination to send them to the hospital for treatment? Or just the right thing to do?
If anything, they were exactly the opposite of discriminatory, as post-treatment, they let her (now with the "mental history" label attached) back in, right?
I don't know enough about this person to say whether it was the right thing or not, but in general suicidal thinking combined with self harm shouldn't be enough to deny someone access to University.
Self harm is for some people a protective measure that prevents suicide. It's possible that a bit of supervision and temporary lighter workloads would have helped.
I have been careful use use weasle words - "if her account is accurate" etc - because it's possible that the only option was for them to remove her temporarily and their weird system needs her to reapply.
And I'm not sure if they get a pass on not discriminatory. Excluding people with current mental illness, but accepting people with a mental health problem in their history isn't really good enough in the 21st centuary. Again, I don't know what their policy is so I should not judge them, but what do they do with people who disclose hearing voices or psychotic episodes or bi-polar mania or eating disorder? (Anorexia is far more dangerous than self harm, even including the suicidal thinking).
"in general suicidal thinking combined with self harm shouldn't be enough to deny someone access to University"
I would agree with you, but I sympathize with the University as well. In our litigious society, Yale could easily be sued by the parents of the suicide victim. Worse, once a school starts "treating" a student for mental health issues they by default assume some responsibility for that person. If the OP did eventually jump from the roof of Vanderbilt hall, people would be asking, "why didn't they send her home?"
The university could have treated her with more compassion and respect, but their ultimate decision to remove her was probably their best course of action.
Fear of litigation has made it difficult for people or organizations to be generous; their first priority has to be CYA unless they want to risk financial ruin.
You are betraying complete ignorance of how humane and effective treatment for acute psychiatric conditions is supposed to work. The account in this article, assuming it is correct, has so many red flags I don't even know where to begin.
If a person in a wheel chair had their legs bleeding out, would it be discrimination to send them to the hospital for treatment? Or just the right thing to do?
If anything, they were exactly the opposite of discriminatory, as post-treatment, they let her (now with the "mental history" label attached) back in, right?