It’s getting hard to shock anyone when it comes to college news, but this one stopped me cold. A growing number of Ivy League students are using “disability” status to get academic perks that most people would never imagine. At Brown and Harvard, more than 1 in 5 undergrads now qualify for disability accommodations. At Stanford, it’s 38 percent. That’s not a small group that needs support. That’s a movement.

And the benefits aren’t minor. Students with the right paperwork can avoid being called on in class because of “social anxiety.” They can take exams with extra time. They can request a distraction-free testing room. In some cases, they can even bring a parent to class. Yes, a parent. A mother sitting beside her adult child in a college lecture because it’s considered an accommodation.

No one is saying real disabilities don’t exist. Of course they do, and students who genuinely need support should get it. The problem is that these numbers don’t match the reality of population averages. When elite campuses suddenly triple or quadruple the national rate of reported disabilities, something else is going on.

Part of the issue is that the definition of “disability” has stretched so far that nearly any struggle can qualify. Anxiety. Trouble focusing. Feeling overwhelmed. These are real experiences, but they’re also common parts of being young, stressed, and human. Combine that with schools eager to avoid legal risks and students eager to avoid academic pressure, and you get a system that invites overuse.

And once these accommodations become normal, the line between help and advantage gets blurry. Students who don’t use them end up competing in a different academic environment than those who do.

It’s hard to watch this unfold without thinking about fairness, resilience, and what college is supposed to teach. And honestly, I still can’t believe this is real.