As many of you local San Franciscans know, the Academy has a pretty impressive flotilla of buses at its disposal. You would think, since they have so many then, then they could easily accommodate their disabled students. Unfortunately, that’s apparently not true. Recently, a student came to me with a story of her twisted ankle, which turned into a journey of frustration and (literally) pain. At Berkley, you get driven around on an awesome little golf cart if you can’t get to class yourself due to sudden injury. As a University, the Academy is responsible for making sure their students are able to get to their classes. Maybe not of their own laziness, but if you have a disability, you have the right to be accommodated.
After having my new friends journey described to me, I decided to see just how hard it would be to get to the Academy’s appropriately named “Classroom Services”, which handles students with disabilities. Here is my journey in pictures.
This first image is pretty self explanatory, from the first page head to Current Students option that got cut off at the bottom of the image.
From MyAcademyArt, go to Coursework Support, and then click on the Academic Resource Center. This doesn’t make any sense. Why isn’t this under Student Services? How does coursework support have anything to do with a kid with a broken ankle?
Here you will get to the Academic Resource Center, which is pitched to the RAs (Resident Assistants) as a resource for tutoring for failing students.
All the way at the bottom of the page, hidden behind a sign labeled “beware the leopard” is the fabled Obtaining Disability Services. Go there and you will be able to charter a handicap bus with wider seats and lower access so you don’t have to crutch yourself up the three and a half feet worth of normal bus stairs.
It doesn’t seem too bad, but my new friend apparently had quite a bit of trouble finding it because it wasn’t intuitive. I also contacted the head of Classroom Services out of curiosity, because the RAs aren’t told to send anyone there. Each of my managers, when asked, had no idea where to send her. Even the head of the department didn’t bring up the service when asked for resources. (Kind of vague, but you guys just gotta trust me on this one.) Also, when I asked the Director of Classroom Services why their site is so hard to get to and why none of the Housing Department heads know where to send disabled students, she said some students are too proud to look up “disabled” in the Academy search engine. Yep. It’s not that the Department is being lazy and not communicating with the other Departments, it’s that our students are too proud to look up “disabled” on the internet.
I tried it.
Hmm.. interesting. 11 results total and NONE OF THEM GO TO ACADEMIC RESOURCES OR CLASSROOM SERVICES. Thanks for being so on the ball, Academy.
What happened to my new friend, you ask? She finally found Classroom Services. They chartered a nice handicap bus for her so that she didn’t have to walk a quarter mile on crutches with a broken ankle. On the day of her class, she waited a full hour for that bus. She missed that class. She called Classroom Services. They apologized and said tomorrow they would definitely send a bus. The next day, she waited another hour for another bus that never came. She ended up having to walk several blocks on crutches because the normal buses don’t go to a couple of her buildings. She was never apologized to and there was never a reason given for why no one came.
