Comment 1
UW-Madison requested that the term “behavioral health” be replaced with “mental health” as the term is broader and aligns with UW-Madison’s current definition of medical withdrawals.
Response 1
Change made. “Behavioral health” was replaced with “mental health” throughout the policy.
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Comment 2
UW-Madison questioned the use of the term “completely” in referring to how a physical or mental health condition must preclude a student’s ability to function to necessitate a medical withdrawal.
Response 2
“Completely” removed throughout the policy.
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Comment 3
UW-Madison requested that the definition of “last date of class attendance” be defined more comprehensively, as the last date of class instruction could be confused with last date of class attendance or last date an assignment was submitted.
Response 3
Changed “class instruction” to “academic activity.”
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Comment 4
UW-Madison questioned if the proposed changes to the definition of “immediate family member” were meant to broaden or narrow the category.
Response 4
Added the word “primary” before “familial support unit.” The intention of the change was to broaden the definition of the term to allow review committees more discretion when making determinations in individual cases while exercising their judgement of limits.
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Comment 5
UW-Madison questioned if the changes in the last sentence of the first paragraph of section 6.B were designed to leave tuition adjustments up to the campus’ discretion or to make it the default option.
Response 5
No change was made. The intention was to allow for a campus level interpretation of the appropriateness of tuition adjustment based on individual case circumstances. The change was also designed to set the expectation that the default is not to refund tuition, but campus review committees may elect to refund at their discretion based on individual circumstances.
This policy is meant to provide broad guardrails for campuses as they are adopting their local policies and procedures to operationalize medical withdrawal processes.
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Comment 6
UW-Madison inquired how the added language in the first sentence of the second paragraph of section 6.B regarding campus policies and procedures for withdrawals and the return of financial aid funds related to the definition of “last date of class attendance” in section 5.
Response 6
Moved the language from section 6.B to the definition in section 5 for clarity.
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Comment 7
UW-Madison noted that the policy does not mention utilizing campus health centers as a means of protecting students’ private health information when such information is submitted to qualify for a withdrawal or re-entry.
Response 7
No change was made. This point was discussed with the Senior Student Affairs Officers, who noted that many campuses outsource their student health center activities.
Private health information is collected by the Dean of Student’s Offices in other instances outside of medical withdrawal, and these offices are very practiced in complying with the requirements for protecting such information.
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Comment 8
A commenter from UW-Platteville recommended that the official withdrawal date used by the Registrar’s Office should be the date that the student informs the university they are withdrawing, not the last date of attendance.
Response 8
No change was made. This point was discussed with the Senior Student Affairs Officers, who did not agree that this was the appropriate methodology and supported the approach in the draft policy.
Changing the approach to the date the student informs the university they are withdrawing would be inconsistent with allowances in federal regulations regarding financial aid and with the way the policy is written to allow for post-term application for withdrawal.