Inaccessibility meme, the residential college student remix

[killing_rose]

Like jesse_the_k, this one's inspired by lightgetsin 's post.

I'm a college student at a residential liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere, Massachusetts. And while I manage to work around all of these things, they are still a pain in my ass on an almost daily basis. I've got chronic migraines and celiac, plus a possible other autoimmune issue that no one has put a label on.

1. I live on the third floor of a 80+ year old dorm. There are no elevators, and on the days when I feel like hell, I can't go out either of the main stairwells because they're steep, tax my spoons, and get heavy foot traffic that protests slow moving humans. My solution: either a) limit my trips out of the building--or even to the kitchen, which on the first floor or b) use the fire escape, which is just outside my door. The fire escape isn't as steep and it's easy to go down slowly because very few actually use it.

2. Our college has no disability office. There is a carefully hidden portion of our academic resource center that will, if you come in with all the appropriate documentation and go through a committee hearing, discuss possible accommodations. They do not consider chronic migraines or celiac to be disabilities, as per their page on the campus website. Much less the fun "we don't have a diagnosis for it, but we can guess!" stuff.  (Which I would like to point out that after two years of banging my head against a wall and talking to the woman apparently in charge of this three times, I found out  that the hidden section that is not a disability center, but a committee, existed about 10 minutes ago.)

This means that if you have problems, you have nowhere centrally located to go. I get around it by talking directly to professors, spending time in our deans' office, and bitching out the specific places that screwed up. Before you ask, yes, this does use up more spoons than it saves and I'm convinced that the nice folks do it on purpose.

3. Our health center is located two and a half blocks from the edge of the campus class buildings. That is, at best, three blocks from the dorms. And from my dorm, that's at least 6 or 7, if I manage a direct route. (Which I do only occasionally.)  I have to be at the health center for standing appointments at least once a week, and occasionally two or three times a week, usually when I'm too out of it to get there. Security will only give you a ride there if someone intercedes for you. Most of the time, I make it as far as the deans' office, collapse, and the dean intercedes. Sometimes, it's my boss, since I've literally almost fallen in our workplace because of migraines. And let's not discuss what happens if you have to go to a specialist or the ER. (Hint: Security complains the whole way, if they can't figure out a way to wiggle out of their obligation.)

4. Our dining halls have no idea what cross contamination is. They have a tendency to mislabel ingredients. At the best of times, I can eat in two of eight dining halls. At the worst of times, I end up so ill that it takes every spoon I have to get back to my dorm, much less participate in class. Most of the time, I get around the fact that the next bite will put me out of commission by not eating in the dining halls. I take food with me so that I can still hang out with friends. At one point, I kept a chart of how many days I managed without eating something I was allergic to: the chart never got past six days without restarting.

5. My professors don't actually understand light sensitive migraines. I have to go to class or else I will fail. I started wearing sunglasses inside to avoid hurling in the middle of a discussion, and wasn't that a fun discussion to have with my professor, who had not previously realized that my chronic migraines is more, "At least two a week, and that's the good weeks when the preventatives and abortives work" and less, "Infrequent and medically controlled with like, Advil." (Oh, I wish.)