"This article and web site raise a lot of questions, in my opinion. Is it possible that this material is the kind that can create, stir up, or focus hatred and resentment against sexual minorities (e.g., people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered), and to make it appear that sexual (and racial) minorities are to blame for keeping people with disabilities out of graduate school?"

Response from Ehrenfels: "I did include a paragraph that compared the plight of a visually impaired friend, NJAA ("not just another applicant"), with that of less credentialed cohorts whose standing as sexual minorities afforded them a competitive advantage for counseling center positions. But this is by no means the crux of the article, and this comparison was included in the original draft of the report to make it quite plain that NJAA continues to be overlooked despite superior qualities and credentials. I also included the comparison to emphasize that persons with disabilities do not enjoy a privileged minority status among psychologists if indeed they enjoy any kind of minority status at all."

"The article discusses at great length the rather compelling and consequential circumstances surrounding NJAA's failure to achieve a match for internship and post-doctoral employment in counseling centers. This is the front end of the article and constitutes approximately 90% of its mass, and should raise a lot of interesting questions concerning the reason for NJAA's career frustration. In my opinion, the response from this high-ranking APA official is not an appropriate response from someone who has placed disability on his extended list of causes.

"Also, I am making independent observations and will not allow this official to distract the readers from what I identify as the cause of NJAA's plight, psychologists! For someone who does not want to invite conflict between minority groups, he telegraphs a favoritism toward sexual minorities. How could I feel any other way after the official fails to adequately acknowledge 90% of the essay in focusing exclusively on how a few references to preferential treatment for sexual minorities could prompt hatred for that group? I don't know how a champion of persons with disabilities can manage to accomplish neglect of these proportions. But let's get back to his response."

"Can it (Ehrenfels article) prompt people to act on such hatred and resentment? Could it lead to the view that such attacks targeting sexual (and racial) minorities are spread in a way that avoids responsibility and accountability by using a cloak of anonymity or false names, without identifying the person who wrote this article?"

Response from Ehrenfels: "This is not the first time this official has encouraged skepticism for the message due to the anonymity of the messenger. And while his complaint is not without merit, the complaint should be supplemented by additional questions concerning the possible risks of authoring such an article under one's real name. In fact, NJAA could not have written the article herself for fear of reprisal. After the treatment NJAA received at the hands of psychologists, such fear is not unfounded. Are psychologists in any position to raise issues of trust? To demand trust from someone they've betrayed? The decent thing for this official to have said at the very least would have been 'if this is true, this should gravely concern all of us.' Why didn't he make such a statement?"

"There is, e.g., this passage (which mentions race as well as sexual orientation): "NJAA also learned over the course of her internship, from the counseling center culture, and from a preponderance of certain issues within counseling center journals that no number of credentials can overcome the preference for racially diverse and for openly transgendered or homosexual applicants. . . . Nevertheless, she has learned that such experience pales in the face of competition who use their cover letter to celebrate, concede, or even feign bisexuality. NJAA's current supervisor reported that a friend routinely feigns bisexuality in her cover letter and encouraged NJAA to consider resorting to such chicanery to level the playing field."

Response from Ehrenfels: "I wish this official could have been as sympathetic as the high ranking military officer who rescued NJAA's career when he offered NJAA her first externship. Having recently been apprised of the suspicious events concerning NJAA's rejection for a counseling position at a Virginia state university, he agreed that extraordinary measures were required to help her find her way out of the clearinghouse in which she feels she is permanently wandering. He has stepped up to offer her a post-doctoral position. He created this (unfunded) position for her at his facility and offered his supervision where she could acquire the hours she needed to qualify for licensure. But not without stating "we (psychologists) are the worst" in reference to attitudes toward disabilities.

"There are certain facts in this case, observations and experiences that cannot be denied. Position announcements that state a preference for a multicultural specialist are only one. NJAA is an intern at a counseling center. This is the only internship she was able to land, and it was also only one of two internships for which she interviewed over the phone (i.e., not in person). As enthusiastic as the counseling team behaved over the phone, upon the arrival of NJAA at the counseling center, NJAA was asked to sit down and address concerns about the reactions of clients to her disability (i.e. her appearance). While this may sound like NJAA is the elephant woman, she is in fact a beautiful woman with golden hair whose skin happens to be very light and whose eyes happen to shift very slightly from side to side. None of her former clients have ever expressed any concern over her appearance, and her drop-out and no-show rates are, at worst, par for the course. She comes highly recommended by former supervisors. In short, it appears her disability is a problem only for the professional community, and it has prompted speculation among friends and associates that this community may be projecting, or passing off, its own pathological anxieties and pain on the client population.

"Coming on the heels of a traumatic year in which she failed to match after applying to twice the national average of internship sites (even while her cohort reports not having put any effort into her own internship search), NJAA is now forced to ask this question: "how will I earn the hours I need to be eligible for the licensure exam?" A reasonable question from someone with the ambitious goal of taking the EPPP in May of 2004. But back to the response:

"At another point the author writes: "I have this sinking feeling that, had I been an applicant, my essay on a life of dreaming and dream research might not have interested them and yet I would have been a serious candidate had I showed up to my interview in drag."

Response from Ehrenfels: "Let me provide some background from my own life. I believe I had put in applications to graduate school during one of the pivotal periods in the history of our educational system: 1992. The political climate in this country with respect to political correctness was peaking and, even after it subsided, it continues to exert considerable pressure. In 1992, it seems people were making decisions for the most arbitrary and demographic reasons. I was expelled from the floor of my residence hall because it was dubbed the "diversity wing" and I had not earned the requisite number of stars (earned through documented attendance at various functions on campus accredited as 'multicultural'). Unfortunately, this was the only residence hall with private bathrooms and I thought it served me well as one of the school's most academically successful and introverted students (especially that year, when I tied a school record for number of academic units or "credits" [9 over summer, 21 in Fall, 22 in Spring]), including a precocious independent research project which required my attendance at a supervisory meetings on many of the nights that I could have been at a multicultural function. Anyway, I was expelled and the expulsion was upheld upon appeal. Fortunately, due to my ranting, I got the diversity wing expelled from the plush dorm and into some other dorm so that in the end, I guess I was victorious. But from that time forward, I became acutely aware of just how much college had transitioned from academic to social institutions (i.e., to places for socializtion, social experimentation, and social policy experimentation). I had been rejected from many undergraduate colleges in 1988 despite a near perfect high school GPA and independent reading and research in service of precocious goals because I was not well-rounded. Well-roundedness was the buzzword at the time. It was a call for nerds all over the US to join the high school swim team and school literary magazine. I did join the literary magazine. I even served as the editor-in-chief and I worked in retail at a 60 hr a week job organized by my membership through Distributive Education Clubs of American (DECA), a high school function. Even won the DECA New Jersey state male modeling championship that year, but I was told I didn't hit the right angles. Breaking a 20-year school record for the 600 meter track-and-field event did not count, because I recorded that record as a P.E. student during final exams and not as a member of any track-and-field team.

Need I even address the University of Michigan admissions policy, which grants 20 times the weight to race and ethnicity as it does to the essay? While falling short of defending Michigan outright, a lead article in the American Psychologist implied support in its overall defense of affirmative action policy. So before we wonder where all the dream researchers have gone (reminds me of that tune, 'where have all the cowboys gone?'), we could remind ourselves that a few more generations of the kind of mentality that spawns affirmative action could shape the academic ranks from true students of the psyche to a population of affirmative action policy analysts and lobbyists. Granted there are some benefits as far as citizenship standards are concerned. But the price is too high. The price we pay for social education and indoctrination is the loss of freedom, truth, and beauty.

"In my opinion, the claim that credentials are basically irrelevant and that all one needs to do to be seriously considered is to cross-dress during an interview can stir up enormous resentment and hatred against sexual minorities who, it is implied, are getting a free pass (along with those who are supposedly admitted without the qualifications and abilities possessed by people like the author or subject of this article but who don't need to meet standards because they are admitted for the sake of "racial diversity"), able to gain admission when unqualified while blocking people like the author or the subject from any hope of admission no matter what their credentials might be.

"In the absence of any verifiable evidence demonstrating that the claims made are valid, it is interesting to ask: If people with disabilities and people who are members of sexual minorities are encouraged to hate each other, who benefits? And what might the results be if the flames of bitterness, resentment, and hatred are fanned by anonymous sources? What actions might be taken?

Response from Ehrenfels: "I still think the more appropriate question is: "are these claims made valid? Because if they are, we have a major problem on our hands, and I should not be ignoring them. And then beneath his signature, he provides a link to his web site, named "Articles on Disability & Accessibility in Psychology Graduate Education and Practice." Beneath the link, there is a quote by Martin Niemoller..."First they came for the communists but I was not a communist so I kept quiet. Then they came for the socialists and the trade unionists but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." This official may think I am playing one minority against another, but if that is all he is willing to address himself to, and if in the process he discourages other from attending to my essay, he is doing a grave disservice to individuals everywhere. I am not big on quotes, but I remember Thomas Paine once said something to the effect of "if one of us isn't free, then none of us are free." I guess this official does not care whether NJAA is ever around to speak for him, because she won't be around much longer.

The Official's Second Response