When Sarah Baird came to the University four years ago, she knew she would need help with her class schedule.
As a severe hypoglycemic, Baird needs to eat at specific times or she risks going into a coma. Because of this, she needs a course schedule that works around her strict meal times. She worked with University Disability Services to get “priority registration,” allowing her to register early and put together the schedule she needed – until now.
“I came back to register last Monday (Nov. 13) and it wouldn’t let me,” she said. “I was curious about what the hell was going on. It had never been a problem before.”
To get permission all she needed was a doctor’s note explaining her needs, and since she brought in that documentation she had never experienced any problems.
“I have to eat every hour and a half, and it has to be certain foods, some of which I don’t care to carry to class,” she said. “I need to allow myself time to sit down and eat.”
Baird said she cannot simply bring snacks to class to tide her over because her condition requires her to eat full meals and have the proper balance of nutrients. In addition to severe hypoglycemia, she has a brain injury which causes tunnel vision and migraines and makes her prone to epileptic seizures. These symptoms occur more frequently when she is experiencing symptoms of hypoglycemia, such as when her blood sugar gets too low.
When she called the Office of the Registrar she was told that she was no longer on the students with disabilities list. When she called Disability Services she began to get “the run-around,” she said.
A woman who answered the phone at Disability Services told Baird earlier this week that “a lot of other students” had been taken off the list and that she had been fielding angry phone calls from those students. Only students with “vision and mobility problems” were still on the list, she said.
“That is what the receptionist told me, and she said that is what her supervisor told her,” Baird said.
Baird was told to speak to the receptionist’s supervisor, Disability Services advisor Molly Sirois.
Baird explained her condition via e-mail to Sirois and asked why her services were cut of so suddenly. Sirois responded that she would address the “misunderstanding” about the change in policy at another time, but said she thought Baird’s regular registration time would likely accommodate her needs.
“I am utterly confident that you can create a class schedule that will meet your needs though if you have any trouble whatsoever, I would very much like to offer my assistance,” Sirois wrote. “The only conflict I anticipate you having with scheduling is if you want to register for a specific class that had limited enrollment and those numbers were filling up.”
Baird said this was indeed the case.
Although Sirois would not specifically discuss Baird’s case with the Emerald because of confidentiality rules, she said the office “had not had contact with that student in almost four years.”
The office had received reports from “a couple” of students who had been unable to register, Sirois said, but she had been unable to verify whether those students were on the priority registration list.
“In those few cases, I suspect that we hadn’t had contact with the students for an extended period of time,” Sirois said.
In her e-mail to Baird, Sirois agreed that the office should have sent notification, but Baird was “overlooked” because the office hadn’t had contact with her in four years.
Baird said she was given no notice that she was responsible for maintaining the relationship with Disability Services, and that last time she had contacted the office, two years ago, she was told that everything was in order.
Disability Services prefers to have contact with its students at least once a year, Sirois told the Emerald, but said that request has “not been explicitly stated” to the students.
“Up until now, we’ve allowed students to have priority registration without annual contact, but we will be revising that practice,” she said. “We are currently in the process of reviewing priority registration policy. If and when any changes are instituted, we will notify students.”
Despite the debate over contact between students and the office, Baird still does not know why students were dropped from the priority registration list.
Sirois’ e-mail does not specify that the lack of contact was the reason Baird was removed from the list, nor does it give any other reason for removal.
The function of priority registration is intended to provide access to “those students for whom there may be barriers in the educational environment,” Sirois said. This may include classes with sign-language interpreters, visual access or classes scheduled at specific times.
In her e-mail, Sirois wrote that priority registration is intended to give students access to the classes they do register for, not allow them to have any schedule they want.
“For some students, such as yourself, that means having classes scheduled in a particular way,” she said.
Baird said this is exactly what her accommodations do – they give her a schedule that works with her unusual nutritional needs.
Sirois said Disability Services is “moving to a broader understanding and approach to access” and that the office does not use “legal mandates” to determine who receives services but is more interested in creating an “accessible, usable and inclusive learning environment” for all students.
Students who need disability services provide documentation of the disability and then work with an advisor to determine individual needs.
“Based on that conversation and documentation we determine how we can best support the student and what services or supports are going to be the most appropriate or effective,” Sirois said.
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