Report says UW students mistreated on trip

SEATTLE – Seventeen University of Washington students were undernourished and received insufficient medical care on a study-abroad program in Ghana last summer, according to a report by an independent investigator.

The March 4 report, released to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Tuesday, concluded the UW employee supervising the trip “did not appropriately handle” legitimate student complaints about insufficient food, debilitating illness, irrelevant lectures and a professor’s bullying.

Administrators are reconsidering their study-abroad policies, but the university has decided the students on the Ghana program will not receive the full refund they have requested, although they have been given a partial refund.

More than half the students who traveled to Hain, Ghana, to study sustainable development signed a letter of complaint last fall.

The students said program supervisor Linda Iltis, a UW lecturer and staff adviser, lived almost five miles away and seemed oblivious to their poor living conditions.

Students complained that Itlis’ husband, UW music professor Ter Ellingson, was intimidating and angry. He joined the trip when Iltis fell ill early on.

Iltis and Ellingson called the report “seriously flawed, incomplete, and full of factual inaccuracies,” in a statement e-mailed to the Post-Intelligencer on Tuesday. They wrote that they’ve “initiated a process through the university by which we intend to provide the full story and to clear our names.”

The university is reviewing its study-abroad policies due to students’ complaints, UW spokesman Norm Arkans said.

The UW wants to maintain study-abroad programs in more remote parts of the world but must make sure trip leaders are well-qualified, Arkans said.

In January, the UW gave each student $2,500 as compensation, a few thousand dollars short of each student’s full costs, one student estimated.