I love springtime so much. Spring is probably my favorite season closely followed by Summer and Fall. Springtime is when the ornamental cherry trees are in full bloom and the deciduous trees are green once again. The garden is now baring veggies and herbs, and the sun is finally making warm appearances. I also love the watercolored skies and the scattered thunder showers that show up every now and again.
As I type this, the weather is spectacular; it is 70 degrees and sunny. Today is the first day of the quarter that I have actually been able to spend the entire day soaking up the sun as well as having an enjoyable Saturday. The first five weeks of this quarter have been emotionally exhausting. I signed up for a history class that I wish I would have never got myself into. Due to this one class, I would have to say that this Spring quarter has been my least favorite quarter at Western.
To start off, the reason for my disgruntled attitude started at the very beginning. The DRS provided me with an ebook of every textbook that I needed for this quarter except for the one I needed for Modern Japanese History. Another problem that occurred before the class even begun is the professor of the class sent us an email recommending that we buy our needed textbook on Amazon, rather than from the bookstore. However, she failed to inform us that she would not be ordering the needed textbook through the bookstore at all. So, as a student who gets books paid for on scholarship, I showed up at the bookstore the day before classes started to receive my books. This is when I found out that the bookstore did not have the textbook required for Modern Japanese History. This meant that I then had to order my copy of the textbook a day before class started. This did not make me too thrilled. On the second day of class, I took my paperwork (which I was able to get on the first day of classes because I was finally able to get the DRS secretary to make me an appointment before we left for spring break), to this history professor. When I handed the paperwork to her, she filled it out in a very huffy manner while scratching the pen across the page. I also informed her that I was legally blind and had a concern about the movies we were going to be watching. I asked about subtitles and she said that all the movies we watched were going to have subtitles, but that the ones showed in class would be read by a narrator on the film. However, she did not seem interested in my accommodations, so I said I would just figure it out. The majority of movies that were required for the class were old and extremely difficult or impossible to find on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or any provider that is similar. However, there is one copy of each reserved in the Western Library. Now, the movies are old, which means the tapes are old (yes, I said tapes). These tapes had to stay in the library, so they had to be watched on a library monitor that plays VHS. They are super tiny and for a legally blind person, I have not been able to "watch" the movies that I could not find legally on the internet. On a side note, the professor told the class that we needed to watch the movies and if we needed to pirate the movies, then do so. Ok, back to watching the videos; I needed someone to read the subtitles to me and when watching the movie in the library, I could not see the picture. So, for two and a half hours, I listened to my mom read the dialog to me. Thank you, Mom, for reading the subtitles to me while watching an extremely long and slowly plotted movie. For each of the movies watched, a reflection essay/synopsis was required. A primary source (something like a letter, document, article or poem, written during the actual time, not a textbook or someone writing about the past) was also needed to be tied into the paper. The teacher's instructions for the assignment were vague and it was not clear how she wanted us to cite our source. So, one day after class, I asked her how she wanted the information cited. She told me to cite it however. I also asked what she meant by "one page" when talking about the primary source. I asked if that meant we needed to complete a separate write up on the primary source itself and she said no. During this conversation, nor in her directions, nor in class did she mention that the directions for "one page" meant to bring a copy of the primary source that was used. When she handed back our first paper, she informed us that we all did a terrible job and that we were not to come talk to her about it until our second assignment was returned to us. She had marked up my entire paper, but instead of explaining how I did not follow her expectation (directions that were not clearly stated in her instructions, or orally when asked questions in class), she changed my words and gave her opinion about my interpretation of the movie (a movie that was not easy to see in the first place). She also marked up my citation of the primary source that I used; even after she said it didn't matter how I completed it.
Another thing that happened in this class was we had maps to study for the tests. The map of Japan that ended up on the test was warped (scrunched up unlike the map provided to study with - this is very difficult for a legally blind person to deal with). Also, the maps that were provided online to study with were not of good quality either. So, when they were blown up, they became fuzzy; the words were not legible.
To top it all off, my professor had posted an introduction slide on Blackboard of a picture of a cat with evil eyes and claws drawn that says, "I don't do touchy-feely. I do scratchy-bleedy."
I have talked to a lady from the President's office as well as taking a meeting scheduled for this Monday with a lady from WWU's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) office. This class has been the last straw. And now that I have finally found who I need to talk to after two years, I am relieved! I am hoping that these problems will be straightened out, not only for myself, but for other students dealing with similar experiences as well.
Okay, so I wrote the information above in the middle of Spring quarter and now the quarter is coming to a close. Two days after I wrote the previous paragraph, I met with the lady from Western's OCR office. She seemed pretty nice and she gave me the opportunity to tell her all my concerns about everything I had experienced with regards to certain things that have happened with the DRS and different professors. As I was talking, she took notes and tried to document everything that I said. I asked if I could come back and read everything she typed and she said that I could.
In that meeting, I also had the chance to meet the head of the DRS, who happens to be the head of the Admissions office as well, so he is never actually in the DRS. I did not get a good first impression of him; he told me exactly what he thought I wanted to hear, but at the same time, he gave the same excuses that I have heard from the other DRS workers many times (i.e. We have over 600 students that we accommodate, we are short staffed, we are doing the best we can...). That meeting ended and I left. Within a couple hours, I received an e-mail from my DRS counselor, "Just checking in." She was offering to help me plan out my schedule and just wanted to make sure my quarter was going well. What? She wants to help me? In my two years at Western I had never received an e-mail like this ever! Was it a coincidence?
The next week, I returned to read over the notes that the lady from the OCR office had typed; I only found one minor mistake and she fixed it so the sentence would make more sense. After she fixed the mistake, we started talking. She told me that she had personally taken a trip down to the DRS and talked the lady in charge of proctoring the tests, about the mishap with the room for nursing mothers. The OCR lady questioned the lady in the DRS about the table incident (see last post for background information); the lady from the OCR made it sound like it was the DRS lady's fault. The DRS lady started making all sorts of excuses (i.e. I thought her chair could fit under the table in the large testing room, I did not know...). However, the lady in the DRS, who the lady from the OCR talked to, was not even there when the mishap happened! So why did she feel as if she had to make up excuses? The OCR lady also told the DRS lady that she needed to start allowing me to use the room with the higher table again. However, the lady from the OCR office got this wrong! I specifically told her that the lady from the DRS, who has the responsibility of proctoring tests, had nothing to do with the table and room incident. I also told the OCR lady that every test since the mishap, the DRS testing lady had been there, gave me my test and allowed me to use the lactation room for mothers, as it was always vacant when I went to test. In the OCR lady's notes, all this information is written down in CAPITAL letters! How in the world did she get the information wrong when she went to talk to the DRS? Why did the OCR lady talk to the testing lady when it was not her fault? Why did the ADA lady not talk to the two counselors who were involved? And why did the OCR lady not pay close enough attention to her own notes to make sure she got the story right before she went and talked with the DRS? When I called the OCR lady on taking the wrong information to the DRS, she seemed shocked. The correct information was at her fingertips, and she missed it.
Another occurrence that happened at the very beginning of this quarter is I went to my DRS counselor and talked to her about my classroom on the fifth floor of Old Main. This building is the oldest one on campus and has beautiful staircases. However, this means that if a fire was to occur, there would not be a safe place for a person to sit, as the staircases are open with no ventilation system like in newer buildings. I asked my counselor what the best plan would be in case of a fire. She did not know and told me she would talk to Health Services and get back to me; she sent me a link to their website. A couple days later, I was talking to a lady who works in the President's Office. She explained to me that there is a special chair (located on the fourth floor of Old Main) that is specifically for evacuating disabled people from a burning building. Now, can you tell me why a counselor from Disability Resources for Students would not know about an evacuation system for students with disabilities? Due to this questioning of miscommunication, there is now a committee being formed and they are going to discus the plan of action that needs to be taken for making set evacuation plans for students with mobility loss.
If you read my last post, you may remember that I talked about how the room that I had always taken my tests in was turned into a lactation room for mothers. Here is an update on that situation. During the meeting in which I addressed the fire safety issue with my counselor, I noticed that the table that I had always tested at in the now lactation room was sitting in her office. At first, I was not sure if it was the same table, but when I began taking my tests in the lactation room, my table (the one high enough for me to fit under) was no longer there. Instead, I had to test at a table that was a good height, but had such a big lip underneath that I could not fit under it. I continued to test in this situation, as is was the lesser of the two "painfuls". By the way, there are still no new tables for the large testing room.
No comments:
Post a Comment