University, USG take steps to address campus disabilities issues

Theri Pickens '05 always gets the best parking spots on campus — right in front of Frist Campus Center and McCosh Hall. After cruising up from Forbes College, she pulls her marine blue Celebrity Pride scooter up to the doorways of the buildings and parks.

"It's great. I get to wake up later and get places faster," Pickens said, highlighting a positive aspect of her struggle with myasthenia gravis, a muscular disease that affects three in 25,000 people.

Pickens' disease is unpredictable. After several surgeries and dozens of tests, doctors are still baffled by the origin of the illness, she said. Usually Pickens has no trouble walking, but there are days where she is completely debilitated.

"I have no idea when I won't be able to climb one step," she said. "Some think it's genetic. Another doctor said I was rejected by God."

But Pickens, who speaks Spanish and Arabic and plans to major in comparative literature, was not rejected by any Ivy League university to which she applied. Pickens selected Princeton over Yale, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, since administrators at Princeton were the most willing to accommodate her needs, she said.

"The people I spoke to at Princeton were willing and open, and there are two places I can count on living in — Forbes and Scully," she said.

Pickens is one of an increasing number of disabled students on campus who depend on the services the University can provide them. There are 64 students at the University who have a self-reported disability, according to Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Student Life Maria Flores-Mills.

Although some students and administrators say that the University is striving to meet handicap accessible building codes, and for the most part succeeding, they acknowledge that the University still falls short.

Widespread construction on campus, for example, presents a serious obstacle to physically disabled students, who spend their time learning the ins and outs of campus so they can get around easily.

"Although Whitman College and the newly renovated dorms will be accessible, it [the construction] makes it more difficult to navigate the campus," Pickens said.

She added that many accessible entrances, like those at McCosh Health Center and at the University Chapel, are not open all the time.

This year, to attempt to combat problems like this one, the USG is initiating a committee to examine all aspects of life on campus for disabled students — from admissions to housing to the eating clubs on Prospect Avenue.

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USG President Nina Langsam '03 said that "tolerance for disabled students is great" among the University community.

"Princeton needs to make every building, including Nassau Hall, accessible to disabled people," she said. "Very few of the clubs are handicap accessible, which means that a student in a wheelchair could not eat a meal at a club. I think that students forget that we are keeping disabled students out of the social scene by allowing our clubs to remain inaccessible. Since the clubs are independent, this will certainly be an uphill battle."

David Podrasky '05, whose spinal cord injury left him a quadriplegic when he was 14 years old, is one of the most vocal advocates for accessibility issues on campus and will head up the committee, under the auspices of the USG's Undergraduate Student Life Committee.

"This is a crusade to make the University more accommodating to all physical disabilities," he said. "When our team is informed, we will be able to accomplish that task."

The committee will examine student life and address the omission of disabled students from the 2001 USG Report on Minorities. Podrasky is currently taking applications for spots on the committee and hopes to get the group up and running as soon as possible. Applicants need not be disabled to join.

Flores-Mills has held her position since last year. Her responsibilities include: eating club liaison, residential college coordinator and housing and dining liaison. She is the only administrator who handles undergraduate disabilities issues, a task which constitutes up to half of her workload at some points in the year.

She describes her job as one that spreads her very thin and one that she did not think she was qualified for at first. But she said her personal experiences have made her sensitive to disabilities issues. Her mother, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, is wheelchair bound, and she also has a niece who is blind.

Though Flores-Mills has a legal background in family law and feminist legal theory, her personal experience and "openness and commitment to the academic mission of Princeton" made her stand out from several hundred applicants, said Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan.

"It's a broad range of things I do," Flores-Mills said. "It's overwhelming. Look at my desk." She pointed to stacks of manila folders covering her desk at West College.

Flores-Mills said that she handles a job that other universities might assign to an entire department, but that "each school has a different philosophy and culture."

"We have a decentralized approach here. We don't have a prescribed way of dealing with different disabilities students have. We take it on a case-by-case basis," she said.

"The way Princeton does it allows issues of disability awareness to be on every administrator's plate. It's a priority for everyone. Since students' needs vary a great deal, this method allows for more personalized attention," Flores-Mills said.

Deignan said Flores-Mills' variety of responsibilities allows her to gain familiarity in the various departments in which she advocates for disabled students.

She added that there are "a lot of different people in a lot of different departments thinking about disabilities," but that these individuals are "not as visible" as they should be. Deignan spoke about possibly creating a website to advertise to the community Princeton's services for disabled students.

Flores-Mills said that if the volume of students with disabilities increases, the University may consider implementing a more centralized approach by creating a position dedicated solely to dealing with disabilities issues.

She spoke "legalistically" about the services the University provides for disabled students, and the mission of the University to give students a sense of independence and self-sufficiency.

"We don't pay for someone to guide them from class to class and we don't pay for wheelchairs. That falls within the realm of personal care, legalistically speaking," Flores-Mills said.

The University ensures that disabled students have note takers and recordings of course texts and that classrooms and living spaces are accessible.

However, this year it has been nearly impossible to recruit students for the recording program. The University recently took out ads in local newspapers to find people willing to record books onto audio tapes, in order to "make up for the lack of student involvement," Deignan said.

"Not every book is available on tape," Deignan said. "This is a difficulty we didn't have seven or eight years ago. I don't know why. Maybe people are too busy to take it on as an extra job. We are delighted to have undergraduate workers record, but they are less reliable and their schedules are not as flexible."

For students like Pickens, obstacles are an everyday occurrence. "People don't understand because they're not confronted with it all the time," she said. "You can only understand if you're put in that position. Like if you break your leg or have to ride in a wheelchair. Princeton is a microcosm of the world, so people aren't aware."