When Michael Schwartz arrived at Syracuse University in 2001 as a graduate student studying cultural foundations of education, he needed the Computer Aided Realtime Translation (CART) for his three-hour classes.

The response was surprising: the director of the Office of Disability Services at the time told him that in order to accommodate his need, SU had to hardwire every classroom — which would cost $400,000.

The university’s thinking on the accommodation was based on the question of how much the accommodations would cost, Schwartz said.

In response, Schwartz and his colleagues started the Beyond Compliance Coordinating Committee (BCCC) to remove the ODS director. They claimed she was too focused on the costs of disability services instead of accommodating people with disabilities. The BCCC, Schwartz said, also put pressure on SU to change its thinking about disability.

The university eventually hired Steve Simon as the new ODS director.

“(Simon) understood the need to accommodate. His question was not ‘How much is it going to cost?’ Rather his question was, ‘What do you need?,’ … It was a 180 degree turn from the old system,” said Schwartz, who is now an associate professor in SU’s College of Law.

Schwartz recalled when he saw the new director and asked for a CART for accommodation. As Schwartz was explaining his situation, Simon stopped him and picked up a phone to call a CART provider.

When he hung up the phone, Simon told him, “You’re all set.”

Over the years, SU has been making progress in increasing the campus’s accessibility and inclusivity for students with disabilities.

A June 2015 draft of the Academic Strategic Plan, Chancellor Kent Syverud’s “roadmap” for the university, identified the need to “sustain an inclusive, accessible campus of opportunity for a richly diverse student body.”

The plan specifically mentions “enhanced strategies” to build on the strengths and the core values of the Taishoff Center for Inclusive Higher Education and the School of Education in order to promote retention and success and to assure full accessibility of facilities.

Rochelle Ford, co-chair of the working group on student experience for the Academic Strategic Plan Implementation Committee, said the working group is looking to make sure accessibility issues are addressed. Ford, who is also chair and professor of the public relations department in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said the working group is ensuring students are able to have access to campus resources, such as  academic advising.

The Chancellor’s Workgroup on Diversity and Inclusion report — released on Monday — made recommendations to create a centralized budget for faculty and staff disability accommodations;  plan within the Campus Framework to house cultural centers, such as the Disability Cultural Center, in a centralized location; require ongoing faculty and staff development on issues of disability; and increase support for staff in areas like the Disability Cultural Center.

Diane Wiener, director of the Disability Cultural Center, said she thinks the idea that disabilities are an expense instead of an asset remains at SU, but it’s less pervasive than it used to be.

Wiener, who has been director of the DCC since its inception in October 2011, said the center holds events and cultural programming around athleticism, art, poetry, music, dialogues, remembrance and empowerment.

The DCC was deliberately housed under the Division of Student Affairs instead of ODS because disability should not be imagined as always being about accommodations, services and help, Wiener said.

“It’s about inclusion and belonging and creating a space for people where people are interacting with each other and where people with disabilities, including myself, are adding to conversations, not making things harder for people with disabilities,” Wiener said. “It’s actually about the resources that are available by working with people with disabilities.

Paula Possenti-Perez, director of SU’s Office of Disability Services, said SU has “a legacy” in the area of disability services — having leaders in disability rights at SU institutions such as the Burton Blatt Institute and the Center on Human Policy.

“All of these are different stakeholders around disability advocacy, and what that told me was that this is an institution that values this population and elevates the conversation around disability,” said Possenti-Perez, who became director of ODS in August 2014.

Possenti-Perez said one of the first things she did as director was update the testing accommodation request system.

“We wanted to make it a lot easier for students to request the accommodation but also include the decision-making in terms of when they felt that they wanted to access, because not every student uses testing accommodations for every single exam,” she said.

The ODS has made the entire process of requesting testing accommodation easy, she said, adding that students can sign up online, and the process is mobile-friendly and completely accessible.

Professors also receive a confirmation email from the ODS when a student in their class signs up to take a test in the ODS, detailing the student’s name, course, date and time, she said.

In addition, the ODS has conducted a survey for students and faculty to seek feedback and provide necessary changes, Possenti-Perez said. The ODS has expanded tutoring support, summer plans, scholarships and pre-orientation programs as well.

Daily Orange File Photo

Because of the office’s outreach effort, the number of students registered with the ODS increased by 14 percent since last year, she said.

Justin Freedman, president of the BCCC said that while the group feels that progress on accessibility has been made at SU, there is “a lot of work left to do” for a more inclusive campus environment.

Freedman, a doctoral student in the special education and disability studies programs in the School of Education, said the BCCC is concerned that SU won’t pay to accommodate students with disabilities at on-campus events hosted by student organizations because those events would not be considered part of the students’ education.

“We think that’s unacceptable,” Freedman said, adding that going to meetings and events on campus is “part of (students’) educational experience just as much as any coursework.”

Freedman said the BCCC is currently interviewing students, faculty and staff about their experiences with on-campus accessibility. The BCCC will also send a survey about accessibility to the university community with assistance from the ODS this semester.

In the future, Wiener, the director of the Disability Cultural Center, said it would be helpful to have more opportunities to have students, faculty, staff and administrators talk together about their daily experiences of what it’s like to live and work on this campus for people with disabilities.

“I think that it would be really important for there to be increased opportunities for students to perceive disability not as a specialty issue but as everyone’s issue and something that affects all of us either in the immediate or long-term,” Wiener said.

Published on March 24, 2016 at 12:18 am

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