By Emma Wilson and Gabriel Zucker
When Cal Poly Humboldt was built, there was no forethought about accessibility, due to prominent physical and financial challenges to updating campus. The hills and stairs that made the school unique ignored an entire group that are an integral part of the campus community. Today, the school is still lacking in a lot of areas when it comes to accessibility, but there is a lot of support from the school and the community to make this campus an accommodating place.
Aileen Yoo, the news and information director for the university, acknowledged that a lot needs to be done, but the school is not being complacent.
“We have a lot of work to do, and we’re committed to having constructive conversations about things that can be done in the short, medium, and long-term to make steady progress,” Yoo said.
Campus Disability Resource Center (CDRC)
The CDRC mission statement on their website states, “Humboldt strives to be responsive to the needs of its community through its commitment to providing services that support equitable access and foster equity and inclusion.”
“The University’s Campus Disability Resource Center (CDRC) was established as the Disabled Student Services over three decades ago to support disabled students and, in the last year, has moved to support the entire campus community,” Yoo said. “The CDRC is a hub of resources and services, which include priority registration assistance, accessible classroom furniture, alternate media, assistive technologies, deaf and hard of hearing services, disability-related advising, equipment available for checkout, exam accommodations, employment application assistance, and accessible office furniture..”
Alicia Martin is an alum and academic researcher. Martin has been attending Humboldt since the spring of 2018, receiving her masters in 2020. They founded the club ADAPTABLE, which is dedicated to disabled students and staff and is still a big part of the disabled community on campus.
“One of the new things that CDRC is doing is making the complaint process more clear and easy to do, which is amazing,” Martin said. “There is now an actual committee that is working to make things better when it comes to complying with ADA regulations. This committee has been out for years. So, these changes are being made.”
Jim Graham, a geospatial scientist professor at Cal Poly Humboldt, noted there are a lot of positive things happening on campus, but emphasized the need for ADA regulations around campus.
“Our Academic Technology Initiative folks, they’re doing great work to get the electronics available,” Graham said. “The CDRC [has] made a bunch of changes, improved their website. So there’s good stuff going on. It’s the facilities piece, the existing facilities piece we seem to be stuck on.”
Student and Community Experience
For a lot of students coming to college, they have no knowledge or plan to receive accommodations. Martin did not even realize they were eligible until a teacher brought it up.
“I remember sitting in my classes, looking around [thinking], ‘Who else is here with me?’” Martin said. “There’s more of me here, and people who understand what it’s like to try to go to school and balance all of these extra things that you have to deal with as a person with disabilities. That is when I really started looking around and paying attention to things and noticing things.”
Matias Solorzano, a graduate student in the psychology department in the academic research master’s program, highlighted his work with Graham on disability awareness events and plans for future projects. One event included inviting disability-specific resources and having Interim President Michael Spagna speak about his experiences with disabilities.
Solorzano is developing a project in his activism class where he invites the California Department of Rehabilitation to help students with disabilities sign up for vocational rehabilitation. Vocational (VOC) rehab is aimed to help disabled individuals find jobs and learn how to maintain that job position. Part of Solorzano’s project is to find funding to help students apply for financial assistance to help pay for tuition outside of the financial aid sources that are traditionally available to them.
“I’m trying to fill the gaps through policy to try to model a workshop based on what has been done before, to kind of evolve into a permanent program,” Solorzano said. “What the university has done well is that they really support us in planning the accessibility event. It helped us advertise, helped us get students to come. They are just very supportive and say that they want to do stuff.”
Solorzano emphasizes the importance of having students with disabilities involved in decision-making processes to ensure their perspectives are considered. He expressed his hope for continued progress and support for students with disabilities at the university.
“There really needs to be a specific space outside of the CDRC for students, staff, and faculty with disabilities to come together and really be a community,” Solorzano said. “If you want students with disabilities to come to campus and to stay enrolled, you need to be supporting them more. Whether that be through a cultural center, or what I’m doing. I am developing an activist project in my CRGS community.”
Julie Myers, an ecological restoration major, expressed gratitude for the assistance provided by the Student Health Center, highlighting the role of doctors and nurses in diagnosing her condition.
“The Student Health Center has helped me significantly, the doctors there — even the nurses — they helped me get diagnosed,” Myers said. “They’ve helped me with … I forgot the word [physical therapy] — and I’ve done that for two years. So doctors at Student Health really helped me, and they’ve supported me more than the CDRC, definitely.”
Myers is also grateful for a number of professors and her advisor with ADA accommodations assistance. Myers explained how professors have been very flexible and supportive, such as Wildland Fire Science and Management Assistant Professor Alan Tapley, who went out of his way to accommodate her needs.
“He taught forest ecology, and we would have a lot of labs in the community forest and even off campus,” Myers said. “He would send me directions of where we’re going and he made a map and circled where we were going, and even when we were walking in the field trip, he would be like, ‘How are you doing? Are you okay? Do you need to sit? We can sit and take a break in class.’”
Myers acknowledges a positive change in the school’s approach to disabilities since the recently appointed administration.
“With the new administration, the [Interim] President’s more visible and he comes from a special education background, so I think that’ll really help with what’s going on, because he’ll maybe pay attention a bit more,” Myers said.
There is still a long road ahead, but the building blocks are being set in place. The need for community involvement and collaboration to address these issues is still a pressing issue, but a path is being forged.
“It’s really the community that builds Cal Poly Humboldt,” Martin said.“It’s the community. We are the resilient redwoods, right? We are attracted to this place for a reason, and that includes people with disabilities.”
This is the second part of a three part series about accessibility on campus.
Emma Wilson is a public relations journalism student at Cal Poly Humboldt minoring in environmental ethics. Wilson is an environmental reporter and science editor for the lumberjack. She is also the president of the Journalism Club of Cal Poly Humboldt. Wilson likes swimming, playing music on the radio, and making collages.
Gabriel Zucker is a senior journalism student at Cal Poly Humboldt. He is the photo editor for The Lumberjack. He loves photojournalism and wants to use his platform as a journalist to give a voice to the voiceless.