UConn has an accessibility problem. From broken elevators to unusable bus routes, UConn is by and large not very kind to its disabled students.
I am Type 1 diabetic. When I asked CSD what options there were for me to take food out of the dining halls (as I need to have food on me at all times in case of life-threatening emergencies), they told me that I had two options. Option one was to designate specific dining halls as “take-out only,” and I would not be able to sit down to eat. Option two was to just deal with it.
I find this to be a terrible way to treat disabled students. If I had chosen option one, I would have had to decline every request for sharing a meal with my friends and tank my social life. I would have to mysteriously disappear at the mention of sharing a meal and draw attention to my limitations. I would be even further isolated at mealtimes beyond having to inject myself with a needle and pen full of insulin in public every time I need food. Sometimes people stare or comment on it, but I need it to live. UConn is asking me to either put a spotlight on a difficult aspect of my life by leaving the room whenever I need to eat, or to suck it up.
I chose option two. On top of paying for the already quite pricy required mealplan, I am responsible for buying even more food to access outside of the dining halls. This is a tax on students with food related disabilities, and they should not have to choose between their social lives and their wallets.
Another example of UConn choosing to ignore disabled students’ social needs is the bus routes. Over the last few years here at UConn, the buses have dwindled down to scarce numbers. On top of that, the app for tracking the buses, Passio GO!, is constantly riddled with errors. It makes planning something that should be simple (such as grocery shopping) needlessly difficult.
Heavens forbid you live at North, Northwest or Busby with only the Blue Line to drop you off. Blue Line’s route does not even take the students living at these locations to anywhere further south than the engineering buildings. And for the students with mobility disabilities who need to buy groceries or pick up a prescription from CVS? They are expected to take buses with multiple transfers that are out of their way and listed with inaccurate times.
And what happens on weekends? The buses, already crowded and few in number, seem to disappear. If you miss the bus on a weekend, you have to wait around an hour and 30 minutes for it to loop back around. Does UConn expect its students that depend on the buses for mobility to not go out on the weekends? Are they supposed to stay sequestered inside of their dorms with doors that are too heavy and broken push-to-exit buttons?
Let’s say that you obtain an injury that makes you temporarily disabled, which could happen to anyone. Trying to live your life becomes a waking nightmare. Say you need groceries. Passio GO! told you that the bus would be coming soon so you waited. It never came. It was stuck idling somewhere near the Student Union or near W lot. You buck up and decide to walk, even though your knees have been acting up. It hurts. You buy and carry your heavy groceries that you never wanted but needed. After a long trek downtown and back, all you want is a shower. You open the door to the bathroom (it creaks loudly and does not ever fully close) and beeline for the “accessible” shower. There is no chair. You toy with the idea of submitting a work order to get one, but that would mean admitting to a stranger that you need one. Your joints are aching, but you muster up the energy to keep standing. The shower curtain is littered with mold. Don’t worry about getting contaminated by anything though; your UConn-recommended shower shoes should keep your compromised immune system safe. You turn on the water. The handle is broken. The term “accessible shower” feels like it’s mocking you. You deal with it. It feels unnecessary and fixable (but you keep dealing with it), much like the rest of the problems caused by UConn’s infrastructure.
UConn needs to treat its disabled students better, and that starts with the seemingly minor day-to-day inconveniences. Because when you’re disabled, those inconveniences quickly add up. There is no reason to add more difficulty and stress into disabled students’ lives. UConn, please do better.