This is the first installment in a two-part series on disabilities on campus. Check Wednesday's paper for the second installment on physical access renovations and plans for Virginia Tech's campus.
When T.C. Jones doesn’t immediately go to shake your hand, don’t be offended. He doesn’t shake hands often.
In fact, his hands have only recently re-learned to write legibly — or rather, legibly enough for him to read, the senior computer science major says.
And his hands’ most important task is to guide his wheelchair — the manual one for short trips and the electric model for longer days on campus.
Jones is one of about five registered students on campus in a wheelchair, but one of hundreds with a disability. Although he became disabled after enrolling at Virginia Tech, many students need to consider disability access and accommodations when deciding on a school.
Tech is tasked with reasonably accommodating students with disabilities, and while those who use the campus disability services have called them helpful, only a handful of students in a wheelchair are currently at Tech.
FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
According to the Disability Statistics Center at the University of California in San Francisco, about .06 percent of the population uses a wheelchair — but the number of Tech students in a wheelchair who work with Tech’s Services for Students with Disabilities office fits on one hand.
Rick Ferraro, assistant vice president for student affairs, attributed the small number to self-selection of prospective students — a student with a disability might find Tech’s size and weather conditions intimidating, and immediately disregard it.
“We tell them the truth,” he said of prospective students. “They do have to understand what they’re dealing with.”
Ferraro said that newer universities have an advantage with modern buildings that are more accessible. Any university built after 1990 would be fully compliant with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, which created architecture accessibility standards. Students with disabilities might also be drawn to a small campus that is easier to navigate.
“What we do isn’t necessarily what another college will do,” said Susan Angle, director of SSD.
Most Tech students with a disability aren’t as obvious as a wheelchair user. A documented disability can range from a psychological condition to Attention Deficit Disorder to the quadriplegia that put Jones in his wheelchair three years ago.
A CHANGE
Like most freshmen, Jones came to Tech in 2006 and found his own routes on campus.
Then the Powhatan native broke his neck on a snowboarding trip to Snowshoe, W.Va. in February 2007. Jones is now a C7 complete quadriplegic, which means he has no feeling in his legs and very little use of his hands.
Jones took the rest of the semester off, but he came back to Tech in fall 2007 — and had to completely retrain his brain when it came to the campus.
“I got used to the ways I walked,” Jones said. “It was hard to figure out where the ramps were. Initially I had to kind of keep a mental map of the place.”
An access map is available on campus, but it hasn’t been updated since 2006. David Bingham, architect for ADA Services, said the map should be updated within the next month.
Through trial and error, Jones would sometimes be late to class while learning the best routes. Now, his schedule is like clockwork.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10:30 a.m., the Blacksburg Transit Access bus is scheduled to pick Jones up from his Terrace View apartment. Any later, and he might not get to his 11:15 a.m. class on time in Hahn Hall North — the bus can show up in a 20-minute frame before or after 10:30, and it leaves within five minutes without him if he doesn’t show up.
Like a trivia game, Jones can rattle off the best ways to get around campus. McBryde and Torgersen halls are easiest to navigate. Davidson Hall may have a few power doors, but they are never in the hallways where he has classes — some doors are extremely heavy to push in his electric chair and nearly impossible in the manual one.
McBryde only recently got a power door for the first-floor ramp way. Torgersen’s bathroom doors could use power doors.
“But you can’t expect it for all doors,” he said.
On one Friday, Jones sat with friends in the Graduate Life Center Plaza, drinking a peach smoothie from Owens. He started up the hill past Squires Student Center but a truck on the path stopped him in his tracks. On this occasion, he evaluated the path and saw that he could still take the path in his wheelchair.
This is a normal occurrence for Jones, as the biggest challenge for him is the unpredictability of the campus — sometimes vehicles on the path or construction will completely prohibit him from taking his normal route and he has to find another way to class.
He can get from Hahn Hall North to Squires in seven to 10 minutes, but if his route is blocked by construction, it can throw that off considerably.
The record-breaking winter Blacksburg experienced this year occasionally left Jones without a way to class. One time he even got stuck on ice, and someone had to help him out.
SSD’s temporary location in Kent Square made the winter harder for Jones.
“I called the SSD office and said, ‘So, are the sidewalks cleared?’” he explained. “They said, ‘I’m not sure, since we’re off-campus.’
“It’d be nice if they had a system to gauge sidewalks,” Jones said, adding that he makes sure to discuss with all professors the possibility of missing class during bad weather.
Angle agreed that bad weather is “particularly difficult” when it came to maintenance. She said maintenance staff tries to clear the busiest access points and then bases other decisions off the students’ schedules.
SSD will move into the future Academic and Student Affairs building behind McBryde Hall when it’s completed in 2012.
The most common accommodation for students is for tests. SSD will send official accommodation letters to professors to allow for extended test-taking times or for tests to be taken in a different room or with a special desk.
In addition to requesting a special desk, Jones uses the office to extend his test-taking time, because it takes him so long to write.
At first, SSD also found students in Jones’ classes to take notes for him but it was “kind of a hassle” to pick the notes up from the office. Now he can write quickly enough to take notes on his own.
SSD can also help relocate student’s classes to buildings that are accessible. Once a student’s courses are chosen, any classes that aren’t accessible are moved.
Jones recalls one time when a professor wasn’t aware why his class moved from Whittemore Hall and tried to move it back. Jones had to talk to him about his disability and explain the move. But usually, Jones said the instructors are aware and accommodating.
Jones and his friends had signed a lease in Terrace View when he had his accident, and he still wanted to live off campus.
“I checked it out, and there were no curb cuts,” he said. “I asked, ‘How do I get up on the sidewalk?”
The apartment complex paid to install a ramp from the parking lot, widened doors and installed a passcode device on his door since he can’t turn locks.
As for downtown, the 22-year-old Jones says the Cellar and Sharkey’s are fairly accessible bars, and he added that the bouncers at Hokie House usually help him up the handful of steps.
“But obviously, I’ve never been to Top of the Stairs,” he said with a laugh.
Accessibility would have been more of a factor for Jones had he come into college with his disability. Knowing what he knows now about Tech, “I would’ve still come regardless.”
PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS
SSD has worked with 72 families and prospective students in the 2008-09 year who had questions about Tech’s accessibility. The university also created College Bound, a summer program where high school students with disabilities and their parents can spend time on Tech’s campus and experience the more independent lifestyle a college student would have.
Sarah Gilbert, a chemical engineering major from Goochland, had narrowed her college search to four colleges. Accessibility was a factor for the freshman, who had been in a wheelchair for six years since a surgeon accidentally damaged her spinal cord. Also on her list was Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, where 10 percent of students are in a wheelchair. The school has seven private vans that take students from residence halls to classes and wheelchair maintenance services.
Gilbert knew she would have received a lot of care at Edinboro, where her teal wheelchair with her name engraved on the side could have been one of more than 700 on campus. But she decided to go to the hilly, wintry, less-accessible Tech where she wanted to study chemical engineering.
“I’d rather put up with crap than put up with bad schooling,” she said of her decision.
Unlike Jones, Gilbert started out on campus in Harper Hall. But after Thanksgiving break she moved to the GLC because the elevator broke so many times in Harper, leaving her unable to reach her third-floor room.
Having handicap rooms on floors other than the first “didn’t make any sense,” she said. When this would happen, she would try to call Hudson or the SSD office, but sometimes no one would answer. She would have to call the Virginia Tech Police Department, which would have to go up to her room to grab her books for the next class.
“It was kind of a pain in the butt,” she said. She will live in the GLC with a friend next year, and she plans to move off campus the year after.
Now, Gilbert says she has a good relationship with SSD and has been able to get her classes changed when needed. As someone who came to Tech as a prospective student with a disability, Gilbert is happy with her decision to come to Tech.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said
BEYOND THE WHEELCHAIR
In the 2008-09 school year there were 546 students with documented disabilities within the SSD office, and Angle says there are many more on campus who either don’t go to SSD for special accommodations or who have undiagnosed disabilities.
The most common disability is a learning disability — 245 students were documented with a learning disability in the 2008-09 year. There were 113 students with a documented psychological disability and 91 students with a medical disability, which could include allergies.
In addition, the office worked with 33 students with a temporary disability.
About half of the students with disabilities were not diagnosed until coming to Tech. Angle said between 45-53 percent of students with a documented disability were either referred — usually by a professor — or came in with questions and were eventually diagnosed. The SSD office handled 338 referrals in the 2008-09 year.
A reason for so many referrals is the difference between high school and college when it comes to workload and independence level.
“Parents had been their guide,” Angle said of high school students. “That’s where it starts to fall apart in college.”
Patricia Amateis has referred many students to SSD in the 26 years she’s been a chemistry professor at Tech. She says sometimes students who have problems taking tests don’t think of the possibility that they have a learning disability.
“It never crossed their mind,” she said. “Then they realize, ‘Wow, maybe this could help.”
CREATING A MORE ACCESSIBLE UNIVERSITY
For all the students that come to Tech already with a disability or are referred, there are eight full-time staff and four wageworkers at SSD.
“There’s a lot to be done,” Angle said.
The ADA executive committee, comprised of administrators, professional staff and faculty, plans to draft up a “refined mission statement,” over the summer, according to Ferraro, a member of the committee.
With the university-wide budget cuts, he said accessibility priorities are about being frugal.
Angle said that her office has developed its own missions in the 16 years she’s been at Tech that now include creating awareness in addition to the accommodations.
“We are evolving,” she said.
Read tomorrow’s installment about access renovations on campus.