Robert Young was first diagnosed with autism when he was about three years old.
He grew up in Lincoln, New Brunswick and now attends St. Thomas University. Up until two weeks ago, none of his professors had really given him any strife about his autism. That changed when Professor Mikhail Molchanov made a comment about his disability and kicked him out of class earlier this month.
The political science student doesn’t particularly like to identify with his autism and usually keeps it to himself.
“I don’t like to talk about it, unless I’m really close with someone and I feel they won’t do anything wrong if I tell them that.”
Young said having autism has affected his life both positively and negatively. He said it was mostly negative when his classmates bullied him in elementary school.
“…But my old brother Richard came to my rescue.”
Young said an incident with a professor, like the one earlier this month, has never happened to him before.
“At first I thought I had actually offended him. I was about to go back and ask why I offended him and then a couple of students came out of the class and told me that we would be going to accessibility services,” he said. “And it was there that I realized that I had been discriminated against.”
When he realized what had actually happened, Young was not happy.
“At first, I was angry and wanted to sue Molchanov,” he said. “But it’s died down.”
Young said since then he has learned a lot more about Molchanov.
“He was actually a champion of civil rights, but what he said, the comments, went back on his character. I don’t think he’s a bad teacher now, but it is going to be something that haunts him for a little bit.”
Molchanov has been put on probation and will not be teaching any of his classes this semester.
Young said overall the incident wasn’t a bad experience.
“To be honest, I really thought nobody really cared about me, but now I’ve learned—it makes you feel good to know that a lot of people do care about you.”
