Since the American Disabilities Act of 1990, Occidental’s Disability Services office has acted as the conduit for disabled students to receive academic and housing accommodations. However, while the department continues to work with students’ feedback, more needs to be done for an office that supports an equitable campus, according to members of the Disabled Student Union (DSU).
Audrey Navarro, the current Department Coordinator for Disability Services, Writing & Rhetoric and the Writing Center, joined the Occidental community in Aug. 2023. She said that making the most of getting accommodations for students requires a deliberate, holistic approach.
“[You have] to be on top of anticipating what might happen and be proactive,” Navarro said. “An important aspect in this role is being intuitive with students and understanding where students are coming from and being able to anticipate their needs.”
Finding the right accommodations and understanding disabled students’ experiences is difficult to disentangle from the stresses of student life, Navarro said. Making students comfortable and facilitating access to resources requires personal connections as well as practical ones.
“I’ve found that some of the most rewarding conversations I’ve had with students [include] having a conversation about their personal interests, or what they did over the weekend, and being able to find out these glimmers, or pockets of space that doesn’t have anything to do with testing or school,” Navarro said.
On the crossroads between Disability Services and writing-oriented departments, Navarro said that disabled students, as writers, have a unique opportunity to control how their stories are told. She said that she channels a career working towards racial and gender equity into her role at Disability Services.
“I don’t know if there’s many intersections with the disability services that we offer here, but I do like to be aware of the intersectional parts of a student: where we come from and how we tell our story, how we connect with other people, how we find community,” Navarro said. “These are all things that I find personally interesting, and I try to find those spaces here in academia and in my own professional career. Just having that as a conscious effort is really important in our work.”
At the DSU general meeting Feb. 19, members said that they had trouble accessing certain accommodations locked behind legal barriers. The Disability Services page outlines the “Rights & Responsibilities” of students with disabilities and faculty responsibilities, currently untouched since June 2011. One such right asks students to “identify him/herself to the Disability Services team within a reasonable time frame when academic adjustments, accommodations or auxiliary aids or services are needed.”
E-board members Ellie Chang (sophomore), Elsa Marsh (senior) and Jamie Perez-Schere (junior) facilitated the DSU meeting and said that they were concerned about the obstacles to accommodations for disabled students.
“You need to prove yourself that you’re ‘disabled’ enough to deserve accommodations,” Chang said. “In a truly accessible environment, one wouldn’t have to pour out their whole life story in order to access things that they need.”
Marsh said that adapting to Disability Services at Occidental was difficult without access to an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that would have made processing accommodations much easier as an incoming freshman. IEPs describe accommodations a disabled student is eligible for in a public school, though it also indicates a college student’s needs in relation to their disability.
“I did not have an [IEP] or anything in high school since I come from a rural area,” Marsh said. “So coming into college, I actually had no idea how to do accommodations or who to contact. The only reason I got accommodations was because of the Wayfinder program during my first year when I was assigned a staff member [who] had the same disability as me. [Otherwise] I would not have ended up in the system.”
However, Marsh said that recent changes in the Academic Accommodations Policy had made the process more lenient.
“About two or three years ago, they implemented a policy where you could get your accommodations renewed just by submitting a digital form,” Marsh said. “Previously, you had to have a Zoom meeting every year. You would go in there like, ‘Yes, I still have the same disability, it didn’t go anywhere, what do you want me to say?’”
Lavender Perry (sophomore) said that the application process for accommodations made them feel vulnerable, even with an IED.
“I still had to go on a Zoom meeting [last year],” Perry said. “I was very nervous during this entire process. I never really felt comfortable, because they asked me questions about ‘How does your disability affect you?’ It felt more about what they want to hear.”
Alongside Navarro, Director of Disability Services and Student Support Michelle Obergfoll rose to the position last summer. Navarro said that the change in leadership indicated a new, positive direction for the office in the semesters to come.
“[Michelle] and I both starting in the summer allowed us to get to know the new landscape of disability services at the same time, and to be proactive with changes or adjustments in responding to students’ needs and their wants,” Navarro said.
Members of DSU said that their rapport with Obergfoll was open and communicative, citing a recent internal petition for a shuttle between upper and lower campus.
“Michelle has really taken an effort to connect with DSU and shift culture at the office,” Chang said. “She definitely feels more welcoming and accessible and just sort of approachable than with my experiences of former people in the office.”
The former Disability Services Office was inconveniently located in Berkus Hall according to DSU members. However, they said that the recent temporary change to Wylie Trailer B as of Feb. 29 and the eventual, permanent fixture in the Academic Commons show promise in the working relationship between the faculty of the office and disabled students.
“We haven’t necessarily made any major changes but I think we really are conscious of making a more efficient and more productive service for students,” Navarro said.
Contact Joaquin Martinez at jmartinez7@oxy.edu.
