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accessibility_fail2010-04-07 10:36 pm
killing_rose) wrote in accessibility_fail2010-04-07 10:36 pm
Inaccessibility meme, the residential college student remix
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.)
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.)
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And I don't know how it works at yr school, but at the college I just graduated from (after only five years!) extensions and grade changes are, in the end, up to the prof - deans can make suggestions, that's all. ANd mostly that worked out fine when I needed an extension - sometimes I got a paper taken down a grade or two, but whatever, let it go. There were one or two exceptions - like the (queer, male, cisgendered) prof who had to be told that really, it's a good idea to give your (mostly queer, all FAAB* a heads-up if the movie you're showing htem for class has a graphic rape scene of a FAAB transgendered character. But I told him after several months (chronic spoon shortage) that he decided that I didn't get a grade change. Two out of three deans I dealt with were awesome; one was ok, but once told me "but other students who are depressed turn their work in on time" (but not all depressed students are triggered by their friggin schoolwork!) and I'd have
fired her assswitched deans immediately but: spoon shortage. So it took me a few months.Aaaaanyway. Your school's access policies (lack thereof) suxx0rs. I hope it makes up for it somehow. As a negative example of what not to do, maybe?
Hmm, I'm curious: from your POV, how easy should/could it be to set up a college dining hall so that people with celiac disease can eat there? I know someone who's very allergic to most food additives so, and based on what I know about food costs, and how dining halls work, it would be expensive (more expensive food, fewer options, more frequent deliveries) to have food without preservatives and additives. Would a better solution be to provide a (properly accessible) kitchen for celiac-only cooking?
*female assigned at birth - includes cisgendered women, transgendered men, and genderqueer or third gender people who are female (raises hand)
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It depends upon the incident precisely how much power the dean has. *wince* Oh dear gods. I would have actually lost it in the room and probably not been able to function so obviously that it wouldn't have been several months before the professor knew. What type of idiot professor...That is ridiculous, as is your one dean. And I am so sorry you had to put up with that to get your degree.
From my point of view, I don't think that they should even try to accommodate celiac/other food allergies in the dining halls. (Though I will admit that it was often the other food allergies that they screwed up on. And then there'd be nights like last night when I was informed that the Yorkshire pudding didn't have soy in it.) I do think it would behoove them to and learn more about keeping certain areas of the kitchen specifically set aside to be free of certain allergens. Because here's the thing: they try. They buy gluten-free food, have it on offer, keep a stash of quinoa for anyone who wants it, etc. They mean well and attempt to make things work--one dining hall, if I ask for something, will run to the store to get it for the next meal, for crying out loud! They just don't have the training, and I don't have the spoons to attempt to remind them all the time.
Where they fall down is making certain that there are specific pans set aside for that food or that the person making it has changed their gloves since they last set out the bread. (I had to explain that one once. And then watch them carefully from then on.) They also forget to mark ingredients or know what's in the food too often to count. And given that next year's first year students will roughly correspond to one of the first generations where nut allergies (and others) are severe enough that places have to be completely free of that allergen?
They need to work on not only not trying to kill me, but not trying to kill others. For instance, there was an incident last semester where they sent someone to the hospital because they were highly allergic to tuna fish and dining services hadn't bothered to list tuna as an ingredient in the dish. What are they going to do when they have to keep things nut free? (Because hey, they don't mark that as an allergen right now.)
A common solution for those with celiac at other colleges is making certain the person lives in a dorm with a small kitchen that few others use. Unfortunately, the only way that I can do that here is to live in a co-op as a senior, and I didn't have a high enough lottery pick for it. So I cook a big batch of food at the beginning and end of the week, and just live off of that.
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Do you at least not have tons of student workers in the dining halls? at my college first-years who wanted to work had to work in the dining halls. And don't get me wrong, there are good things about that. BUT you get a bunch of eighteen-year-olds with varying levels of competency and giving a shit ...
Did the college not give you priority choice in picking a room? Asshats. I know folks at my college who did that - for mental health issues, for mobility issues (I think there's, like, one wing which is both wheelchair accessible *and* has a bathroom that's more than nominally wheelchair accessible - most of the dorms are pretty old and the ones that aren't ... just weren't designed to be wheelchair accessible, wtf). There's a wing for deaf/hard of hearing students where the fire alarms are flashing lights instead of just the buzzer.