Like Phoebe and Nathan, I went off to college with high hopes and expectations, but unlike them I had not been a particularly strong student at Mamaroneck High School. When reading a book or taking a test, words often got scrambled in my mind, and as a result I was an extremely slow reader. Consequently my grades were below average and my SAT scores were deplorable. I now realize that I probably have a modest form of dyslexia, but fifty years ago comparatively little was known about this and other learning disabilities such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or even autism. I struggled through my first year of college and was even told by a professor that I wasn’t very bright. Lacking any kind of support system, I thought about dropping out of college. Fortunately, we know a lot more today about students with disabilities than we did when I was a first-year student fifty years ago, and most colleges and universities have support systems in place that help insure that these students, too, can be successful.
This chapter is a very personal one for me because, in addition to the normal challenges first-year students face, those who come to college with a disability like I did must deal with unimaginable additional obstacles that most people take for granted. What are the special challenges learning or physically disabled students face the first year of college and what do you need to know in order to be supportive of them? How must they be accommodated according to the Americans with Disabilities Act? What kinds of support are available to them?
I’m back at Morningside College, on my way to meet with a group of first-year students who have come to college with a learning disability. As I walk past Lewis Hall, Morningside’s main administration building, I notice a lone student with a cane, probably contemplating how he’s going to make it up the granite stairs that lead to the front door. He is obviously sight-impaired, reminding me of a first-year student in a wheelchair I saw at Tufts, checking out an ancient building where one of his orientation sessions was to be held. I and a couple first-year students hoisted him up the steps and into the front door, but he was probably wondering whether, once he got inside, there would be elevators or accessible restrooms. I offer help to the Morningside student and then continue on my way.
I arrive at the Hickman Learning Center, a combined library and study center, where I meet with three first-year students who are willing to tell me about their learning disabilities on condition that I protect their identities and use different names. They are, for the purpose of this discussion, Jennifer from Des Moines, Iowa; Tim from Rockford, Illinois; and Tanya from Indianapolis, Indiana. They are among the 3.3 percent of all full time first-year students nationwide who have a documented learning disability.1
Jennifer’s parents suspected there was something wrong with her when she was struggling to read in grade school. She was tested and diagnosed as having dyslexia. She says she has struggled with spelling, putting words together, and remembering names. She used to freak out whenever she had to take a timed test; the panic caused a mental block so that she focused mostly on how much time she had left rather than the test. This was especially the case with science, where she would study all night and then draw a complete blank the next day. “I thought I was freaking stupid!” Jennifer says. “I was ashamed about my disability.”
Tanya, who is now rather forcefully rocking back and forth in her chair, almost shouts, “Well, I bet you’ve already guessed what my disability is!” We all laugh. Tanya was diagnosed in eighth grade with Asperger syndrome and auditory processing disorder. It was so difficult for her to hold a pen or crayon still in high school that she couldn’t even do art. And since she could only process half of what her teachers were saying in class, she never quite got the full picture. As a consequence Tanya had to be in special classes since she was little.
Tim is next up. All through high school he struggled to concentrate. “When I took a test,” he says, “I would hear random noises like the wind, clocks, the scratching of pencils. And all of these things made me lose concentration. My heart would start racing, causing me to rush to finish.” Because of anxiety, Tim was ridiculed by his classmates and his grades suffered. It was only after he struggled through the first few days of college this fall that his psychology professor surmised that he might have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and encouraged him to get tested. “When the test revealed that I indeed had ADHD,” Tim says “my psych professor told me that she was amazed I had gotten through high school.”
As Joanne Long, dean of freshman at Vassar, made very clear, it is extremely important for students with learning disabilities to identify themselves to the college soon after they are admitted but well before they arrive for orientation. Unfortunately, many new students fail to do this. The regrettable consequence is that they unnecessarily struggle through college. Did these three students reveal their disability to Morningside ahead of time?
Because she knew in grade school that she had dyslexia, Jennifer’s parents filed a 504 Form, discussed further below, which helped determine the accommodation she would need in high school. She came to Morningside with similar documentation from a psychologist, which she shared with Karmen Ten Napel, the college’s disabilities coordinator, who then determined what her accommodation would be. With Ten Napel’s help, Jennifer talked to her professors about her dyslexia and the accommodation she would be receiving. She tells me that none of her classmates, except for Tim and Tanya, know about her disability and that she plans to keep it this way.
Tanya’s story is similar. Because of the very visible nature of her disability, she learned how to advocate for herself in high school. So when she came to Morningside this fall she was prepared. She met with Ten Napel and shared with her documentation of her twin disabilities. They then figured out what accommodation was appropriate.
Jennifer and Tanya are using a technical word when they talk about “accommodation.” It refers to what professors must do by law under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act to create equity for students struggling with a learning disability. So what accommodations have Jennifer, Tanya, and Tim received from Morningside?
Because he gets easily distracted by what’s on the walls of the classroom rather than listening to the professor, Tim is allowed to choose where to sit and, as a consequence, always arrives early to classes. (Indeed, he arrived ten minutes early for this conversation!). He also gets extended time on tests, which he can take in a private room on the second floor of Lewis Hall. Tanya is allowed to type her notes and can also tape lectures. She is warned in advance about assignments so that she can finish them on time, has no oral quizzes, and can take tests with no time limit. Like Tim, Jennifer gets extended time on tests. She also gets help with homework and if an assignment is due for a morning class, she is allowed to hand it in at the end of the day as long as she shows up for that class.
And how are they doing academically? “I am getting mostly Bs, which is really not that bad,” Jennifer says. “But I’m a perfectionist and expect more of myself. I work my butt off to get these grades.” Jennifer goes on to say that she’s struggling with science and anything that requires extensive reading. General psychology is particularly difficult for her because lots of information is dumped on her over a short period of time and she can’t absorb it all.
Most colleges have first-year requirements in science and a foreign language, which dyslexic students find difficult to master. Morningside does not waive these requirements, but Karmen Ten Napel has suggested science courses that will be less difficult for Jennifer. Thankfully foreign language, which she simply cannot do, is not a requirement for graduation.
“I’m busting my ass just to get Cs and Ds,” Tim says as he shakes his head. “And I have to study four to five hours each night to get these grades! At least I know now what my problem is and I can live with it.”
Tanya is smiling. She tells me that so far she’s mostly getting As, but is upset about a B on a recent science quiz. “But to get these grades I have to spend all my time on homework, meaning that I really don’t have a life socially.” These kids have an impressive work ethic, but it comes at a price.
I ask a sensitive question: have their disabilities caused Tim, Tanya, or Jennifer to feel like second-class citizens at Morningside?
Jennifer tells me that in middle school, when she was taken out of class and given different books, she not only felt like a second-class citizen but stupid as well. “But here at Morningside,” she says “classmates who know about my dyslexia—and most don’t—either don’t care or are understanding.”
“As you can see, I’m very talkative,” Tim says. “I’m also actively involved in everything. I’m involved with SERVE, a college service organization, write for the student newspaper, and sing in the college choir. Oh yes, and I hold down two jobs on campus. So I don’t feel like a second-class citizen. But this is just a front. All these activities hide the fact that I have ADHD. I’m not complaining. I’m having a great time. But I’m not about to tell anyone that all these activities are the result of my being hyperactive.”
Tanya, however, does feel like a second-class citizen here at Morningside because her classmates don’t understand her disability and sometimes treat her like a Martian. She sometimes answers other students’ questions about her Asperger’s directly, but mostly she changes the subject. “I also feel weird in class,” Tanya says. “For example when my biology professor asked the class to pick lab partners at the beginning of term, no one picked me. I ended up with an older, nontraditional student. At first she didn’t want to be my partner, but after I talked to her she felt better.” In another class a professor had problems with her accommodation; he thought she might cheat on an exam if she were allowed to take it alone in Lewis Hall. Karmen Ten Napel had to speak with him. “But not everything is bad,” Tanya quickly adds. “As I said, my social life is very limited. But I’m a Methodist and religion is very important to me, so I go to weekly Bible study. I also went to the football game Saturday in Sioux Falls with a girl who lives across the hall. I loved it, though I almost froze to death!”
I admire these students. Their road to college has been difficult. But they have learned to cope.
I ask them what advice they have for high school students—and their parents—with a learning disability who are contemplating college. “Don’t be afraid to get accommodation,” Jennifer says. “You don’t need to tell everyone about your disability, but let your professors know because most of them will work with you. Work hard. Strive to realize your potential. And parents: help your child find coping mechanisms. Get help before they go to college.”
“If you are having problems with a class or a professor,” Tim says, “make use of the disabilities office. They can intervene or at least advise you what to do. Don’t fall behind. If you have ADHD like me, use it to do good. Get involved. Don’t sulk in your room.”
And Tanya: “Have an open mind. Know that at college you have a fresh start. Get involved and make friends who aren’t going to ridicule you. And parents, let your child be who she is. Be there to provide support because if you’re like me with a very visible disability, that support will mean everything.”
As I have learned, Karmen Ten Napel is a learning disabilities specialist at Morningside College and the point person for students like Tim, Jennifer, and Tanya. We meet in her Lewis Hall office where we explore a number of issues that might be on the minds of parents whose children have a learning disability. How does the administration work with students who reveal a learning disability? What are the challenges first-year students with a learning disability face? Are support classes offered? And what is the role of parents?
Ten Napel runs through the steps involved in identifying, registering, and then orienting first-year students who comes to Morningside College with a learning disability. She tries to make initial contact with students who might have a disability at the various admissions open houses that take place on campus throughout the year. While it is not a requirement, she encourages students with a disability to identify themselves to her either before or during the application process. She points out that by law colleges cannot discriminate in the application process against students with a disability. “Initially, prospective students and their parents are reluctant to reveal a disability, but once they realize that we can provide them with accommodation that will make their college experience more productive and enjoyable, they usually cooperate.”
She points out, however, that just because students with a disability received accommodation in high school it is not guaranteed that they will receive accommodation in college. Indeed, colleges are required to make an independent assessment of every student who claims a disability. A qualified health professional (often a psychologist) does an in-depth evaluation and recommends appropriate accommodation. Ten Napel reviews this information, often in consultation with a professor at Morningside who teaches special education. She then individually interviews the new students so that she can personally understand the extent of their disability. Finally she contacts the professors who will teach the students and shares with them what the accommodations will be. The professors are required by law to provide this accommodation.
Depending on the circumstances, accommodation can take on several different forms. One is right next door: a lone student taking a test with extended time. The college might also provide textbooks on audio tape, readers or scribes for tests, handouts including the professor’s notes, special software for computers, and preferential seating. “By taking all these steps, we attempt to level the playing field for these students,” Ten Napel says.
We discuss some of the challenges students with a learning disability face when they first make the transition to college. Being a self-advocate, Ten Napel says, is huge. “When they were in high school,” she says “parents were their chief advocates. But in college and even more so when they leave college to go out into the real world they must advocate for themselves.” She tells me that if the new student doesn’t self-advocate right off, she personally helps them make the transition. She asks first years to meet with their professors about their accommodations and, in some cases, even encourages the professor to initiate contact.
Do all of these accommodations cause those affected to feel singled out? In high school, Ten Napel says, students with a learning disability are often separated into special education classes and thus are very visible to their classmates, but this isn’t an issue at most colleges, where classes are fully integrated. Moreover, unless students go public with their disability, no one will know except Ten Napel and their professors. “And in my experience,” she continues, “even if the disability becomes known, most college classmates won’t care. The important point is for these kids to move beyond the negative feelings some had in high school and just get on with life in college.”
Ten Napel shares an example of learning-disabled first-year students she has worked with who blossomed in college. This student came to Morningside with documented auditory processing disorder. He could sit through a lecture, but once it was over forgot almost everything the professor had said—until later that evening when it all came back. The college accommodated this student by allowing him to complete in-class writing assignments at the end of the day or the next morning in Lewis Hall’s special test room. Ten Napel tells me that he has done very well after graduation and now works for a graphic design company.
What about first-year students who have not done well? When students with learning disabilities are struggling to the point that they simply can’t do the work, they are asked to take a semester off or to attend community college and then, if appropriate, to transfer back in. Ten Napel says that sometimes the problem is not an inability but, rather, an unwillingness to do the work. She tells me about a first-year student who came to Morningside trying to use his learning disability to get out of having to work hard so that he could party. Had she known his disposition, she would have recommended that he take time off between high school and college to figure out what he really wanted to do in life. “Like the general population,” Ten Napel says, “not every learning disabled student should go to college. Many are more suited for a vocational or trade school. But students who are unmotivated probably should not be in college.”
Outside of special institutions like Landmark College in Vermont and the Salt Center at the University of Arizona that deal exclusively with learning-disabled students, most colleges and universities do not have special remedial courses for students with a learning disability. “But I do send some of my students to faculty for special tutoring,” Ten Napel says, reminding me of two professors when I was a sophomore at Drew University who noticed my struggle with reading and retention and patiently worked with me outside of class. In time I learned from them strategies that not only made me a much better student but also got me through college. This kind of personalized attention for students with a learning disability is one of the strengths of a small college like Morningside.
I ask Karmen Ten Napel what advice she might have for the parents of first-year students with a learning disability. There are two kinds of parents, she says: those who drop their children off at orientation and with the college’s help let them deal with their disability, and those who can’t let go. Helpful parents are the ones who provide the college with useful information about how their children have learned or not learned in high school—are they procrastinators? poor organizers?—and then let the professionals do their job. Unhelpful parents, by way of contrast, often jump the chain of command. When there is an issue—for example, their child didn’t do well on an exam—they call the president’s office, not her. Or they e-mail the professor directly, which isn’t doing their child a favor either. “My point is,” she says, “I want parents to feel that we are the professionals and that we know what we are doing.”
Karmen Ten Napel and her colleagues are, in fact, professionals of the highest standard. But not all colleges are as responsive to students with a disability as Morningside College is. Some are terribly understaffed in this area. I know of a small university with a population of six thousand students that has only one person working with disabled students! By law, all colleges and universities must comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, but some do only what is minimally required. Consequently, it’s imperative that you and your student visit a campus and its disabilities office well before accepting admission. Orientation is too late to discover that a campus is under resourced. At that point there is probably very little you can do beyond complaining.
Alex Watters is a Morningside graduate who experienced a terrible accident during orientation several years ago—a parent’s worst nightmare. He went to a lake in Northwestern Iowa with some classmates and, from a boat dock, jumped head first into water that he didn’t realize was only a couple feet deep. He snapped his neck and today must use a wheelchair.
I wanted to know what it’s like to negotiate this campus in a manual wheelchair, so after obtaining one from Morningside College’s nursing department, Alex took Terri Curry, vice president of Student Life, and me on a tour of the Morningside campus. It wasn’t a pretty scene. Wheeling over a thin strip of tar in the parking lot was like fording a small river. Terri Curry and I found it almost impossible to get through residence hall doors lacking an automatic door opener. Alex, in his motorized wheelchair, almost got hit crossing a busy street by a distracted driver talking on her cell phone. At least Alex could accelerate to avoid a collision. I can only imagine what would have happened to Terry Curry or me in our manual chairs. And wheeling up a slight hill was so exhausting that I finally got out of my chair and walked the rest of the way.2
Mary Leida, associate dean of students, and Susan Burns, associate dean of academic affairs, both work directly with physically disabled students like Alex. Even though only a tiny percentage of first-year students come to college with a physical disability, what they tell me—and what I just experienced with Alex and Terri Curry—is important for all parents to know.3 Students with physical disabilities want to participate in class activities just like any other student. “They have a general desire to be treated as equals and with respect,” Susan Burns says. “They want to focus on academics and on their social life. They assume that accommodation will be taken care of.”
Mary Leida tells me about a new student they are working with who is sight impaired—indeed, the student I met in front of Lewis Hall. She says that initially their concern was whether he could find his way around campus, especially since he does not have a Seeing Eye dog but instead uses a cane. So a specialist from the local rehabilitation center spent a good part of the summer working with him on strategies for negotiating the Morningside campus. Fortunately, when he showed up for orientation students were more than happy to help out. Leida says that this young man is very social and so was quickly adopted by his classmates. She worries, however, that he might become too dependent on them because when he leaves Morningside he’s not always going to be surrounded by empathetic and helpful classmates.
So what should students with a physical disability do to get accommodation? Susan Burn’s and Mary Leida’s answer is very similar to the course for students who have a learning disability: they should provide documentation from a health care professional with recommendations for accommodation; set up, if possible, an interview with someone like Susan Burns before applying to the college to determine whether the accommodations the college can offer will be adequate; and finally, once accepted, arrange to meet with their professors.
Using Alex and some other students she has worked with as examples, Mary Leida tells me how a college can give “reasonable accommodation” to first-year students with a physical disability. For example, students who lack mobility like Alex must be accommodated by being assigned either to a residence hall that has an elevator or to a room on the first floor. Because Morningside doesn’t have residence halls with elevators, Alex was assigned to the first floor of Roadman, a residence hall with large rooms and located just across the street from Olsen Student Center and its dining facility. Students with a physical disability must also be provided with classes and labs in buildings with an elevator or, if an elevator doesn’t exist, again on the first floor. Sometimes a college will move an entire class that normally meets on an upper floor of a building to the first floor, even if only one physically disabled student is accommodated by making this change. Ramps and wheelchair accessible bathrooms, of course, must also be provided in buildings used by physically disabled students. And since Alex doesn’t have complete use of his hands, automatic door openers had to be installed on all the buildings he used as well as a lever to replace the knob on his room door.
“Reasonable accommodation” is a technical and legal term. By providing a residence hall that is accessible and by holding classes and labs in buildings that either have an elevator or are held on the first floor, reasonable accommodation is achieved for students with a physical disability. But colleges are sometimes faced with unreasonable requests for accommodation. Mary Leida says that sometimes students (or their parents) request a full-time caregiver. She says that the college simply can’t afford this. “The rule of thumb,” Susan Burns adds “is that if a freshman with a disability needs something above and beyond what is legally determined to be ‘reasonable accommodation’—like expensive computer software or braille readers or the salary for a personal assistant—they should pay for it.”
While students with dyslexia or ADHD can often hide their disability, someone who has a physical disability can’t. So how do Susan Burns and Mary Leida help their students with a physical disability have as normal a college experience as possible? Burns says that when she first meets first-year students with a physical disability, she assumes that their expectations will be the same as the professors, namely, that academic standards will not be lowered just because of their disability. At the same time, how the first-year student with a disability relates to the professor will often determine how the professor relates to the student. She says that if they go to the professor assuming that they will be treated like a second-class citizen, they could be treated this way.
“But we are their advocates,” Mary Leida adds “and will run interference for them if we have to.” She says that sometimes, but very rarely, a faculty member will refuse accommodation, arguing that students with a physical disability won’t necessarily be accommodated in real life. She must then tell the professor that accommodation is not up for debate; that documented accommodation is a requirement by law. “Still, students with a physical disability have ownership on how they use their accommodation,” Susan Burns says. “Sometimes they don’t want accommodation. It’s up to them.” Alex, for example, is a very independent person who, when he was a student at Morningside, lived as normal a college life as possible.
What advice would they give to parents with children who have a physical disability? “E-mail me if you have concerns,” Susan Burns says, “but trust your student to communicate their needs to me. They must now be self-advocates. Let your son or daughter take ownership of their lives from now on. Also, while we might not have all the facilities a larger university has, because we are a small, caring college, we can provide a personal connection to your student.”
“That’s right,” Mary Leida says. “We are a college that has heart.”