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An Unlikely Activist
Ally Bain '12 goes from being a victim to a voice for the rights of individuals with Crohn's disease.

By Fern Schumer Chapman

Ally Bain '12 stands outside Patterson Lodge, where a meeting with a supportive admissions counselor convinced her that she could continue her Crohn's disease activism as a full-time Lake Forest student. (Photo by Chip Williams)

In April of 2008, Ally Bain '12 faced a difficult decision: Should she go to the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign, Boston University, or Lake Forest College?

She contacted admissions officers at each school to tell them about herself.

"I have Crohn's disease," she said.

Making that statement is not easy. No one wants to talk about an ongoing disorder in which the body's immune system attacks healthy cells in the digestive tract causing socially distasteful symptoms —diarrhea, pain, stunted growth, and bleeding.

"I'm active in protecting the rights of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have this disease," said the 19-year-old, who was diagnosed eight years ago. "I may have to miss classes. I need a college that can support my activism."

Bain says that when she talked to David Bennett '94, director of admissions for enrollment, at Lake Forest, "his eyes lit up. I knew my work would be recognized here."

The petite first-year student from nearby Vernon Hills, Illinois, is the "Ally" behind Ally's Law, also called the Restroom Access Act. Passed in Illinois in 2005, the legislation requires retail stores with three or more employees to provide a bathroom to any customer with a medical emergency. Stores that do not cooperate are fined $100.

Five years ago, when 14-year-old Bain and her mother, Lisa, were visiting a large retail store in the Chicagoland area, the teenager suddenly needed to use the restroom. Lisa alerted an employee. He said that the store didn't have public restrooms.

"Hunched over in pain, I knew I was in trouble," Bain remembers. "The manager met with us, but he wouldn't let me use the bathroom. With tears racing down my cheeks and my arms wrapped tightly around my stomach, I pleaded with him. Still, he refused. 'I'm making a managerial decision,' he said and walked away."

Upon leaving the store, Lisa promised her daughter that this would never happen to anyone again. "I just had to do something," she says, "but Ally came up with the idea." 

The next week, Bain contacted Illinois State Representative Kathy Ryg (D-59th), whom she had met on an eighth grade trip to Springfield. Within months, Bain helped write a state bill and testified before the House Judicial Committee. The bill passed unanimously through the committee, the Illinois House of Representatives, and the Illinois Senate.

Now, the legislation has been adopted by seven states and is pending in fourteen others, says Bain. (Many state representatives contact Bain about the law, and she and Ryg keep tabs on which states are considering the legislation.)

Dr. David Rubin, co-director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at the University of Chicago Medical Center, has served as Bain's gastroenterologist for four years and says she is an unlikely activist. "When I met her, she was afraid of doctors, and her condition had obviously affected her growth and social development," he says. "Being a victim of intolerance transformed her into a voice for others."

"As angry as I am at that manager," Bain says, "I want to thank him. That encounter gave me my cause." She gives speeches for pharmaceutical companies at conferences around the country.

In high school, Bain had several surgeries and nearly died three times. She was so sick that she qualified for the list at Make-A-Wish Foundation, an organization dedicated to granting wishes to seriously ill children. Her wish — to meet actress Julia Roberts — came true. 

For the last two years, Bain's disease has been in remission. "I used to take life for granted," she says. "Not anymore. Now, even if I had the chance to be healthy, I wouldn't take it. My illness is a reminder that I must serve people who can't speak."

These days, Bain finds academics at the College demanding. She is planning to major in communications and minor in political science. Next year, she will be The Stentor's news editor, and she plans to join the Art Club.  In addition, she has a long to-do list for Ally's Law, including creating identification cards for those who are ill and contacting people on Facebook to lobby legislators in other states.

Meanwhile, she has directed her activism towards the student newspaper, The Stentor, where she serves as a staff reporter and deputy copy editor. The Richter Scholar Program, which offers students the opportunity to work with faculty members on independent projects during the summer before their sophomore year, will support her this summer as she works on a young adult memoir about her experiences and Ally's Law.

"The book will break the silence of the illness," she says. "I'm grateful to the College for opening its arms to me and others who want to make a difference."

In turn, the College benefits from her drive. "I could have gone to the perfect school where nothing needed to be fixed," she says. "But I wanted to come to a school where I could influence change on and off campus."

To Dr. Rubin, Bain is small, but mighty. "If people measure Ally, who is five foot one, by her personality and activism, she would be ten feet tall." 

Fern Schumer Chapman is the author of the book Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past. She will also serve as Ally Bain's advisor in the Richter Scholar Program this summer.