Your First Contact with College Systems

If you have a medical or mental health diagnosis, you may need support working with college systems' requirements, deadlines and applications.  This podcast focuses on understanding where to request support, questions to ask and self-advocacy for services.  We give examples of barriers students have when they first engage with their college and solutions.   Thank you for listening!

Our publication will soon be released as a workbook for students, families, service members, veterans, case managers, doctors, counselors, teachers and advocates.   In the meantime listen to our podcasts to become a student advocate for college success! 

Transcript

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Hi, this is Krista Shaw with a Passport to Education podcast for students with a disability of any age going to college. I am a transition navigator for you today, bringing my vocational rehabilitation counseling background to support your journey to college. And in this podcast, we're going to be talking about your first encounters with your college. And what does this mean? It means related to a mental health diagnosis or a medical diagnosis. What support do you need, if any, from college employees working in the financial aid office, the admissions office, the registrar's office, or other services on campus? What support do you need? And are there civil rights laws to help you at your first point of contact with your college? Yes, there are. The work we are doing today is focused on the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination and ensures people with disabilities have an equal rights as everyone else, including employment, education, transportation, and for our podcast today, access to all public and private places open to the general public. Here are some examples to demonstrate problems that college students face meeting with and working with college systems. I will offer solutions for each example, and these are all real examples from real college students. You have a mental health condition that causes a panic attack. In this first example, I'd like to describe this to you. It's a feeling like a heart attack, difficulty breathing, and panic when stress increases. So how do you communicate what you need to a college employee if this occurs? Do you have to discuss your mental health concern? No, you do not. And there is an answer to this concern, correct? Yes, there is. Another example would be you have a reading disorder called dyslexia, which impairs your ability to read and understand printed materials. It also affects writing and spelling. But today is your college's deadline to complete multiple forms required to start college next quarter. Is there help when you will have to read and reread forms many times to complete them? Yes, there is. In my third example, you're challenged by a recent injury on the job and cannot sit or stand for more than 20 minutes due to pain. But today you must meet your advisor to register for classes. Is there an alternative to waiting at their office? Yes, there is. Example number four. You are chemically sensitive to a variety of scents or fumes which triggers an adverse strong reaction. Someone in line is wearing a strong perfume or an aftershave. You've waited for two weeks to meet with your advisor, but you have to step out of line and leave the building. Is there a solution? Yes. When you must interact with campus personnel, how can your college help you with those interactions if your diagnosis creates a real challenge in communicating or reading or focusing or speaking or standing, sitting, or managing stress or other symptoms of a medical or mental health diagnosis? I mean, how do you manage that? How can your college help you in your first meeting with financial aid, with college admissions staff, advising, enrollment, and class registration? And what is the process that makes your first contacts with them successful? So here's what I recommend as your navigator. First, understand what access to college services and support looks like by meeting with your college's services to students with disabilities. And this meeting needs to take place very early, like as soon as you have a diagnosis and you have a concern, meet with your college. If it's two months before classes begin, meet with your college. If it's a year before you start college in the school that's closest to you, go visit with them, go visit with students, services to students with disabilities office. And if and talk talk with them, get to know them and find out what their program is about. And next, if you're not already using assistive technology at home, please reach out to the Job Accommodation Network and explore real solutions with them for your specific diagnosis. They are really focused on workplace accommodations, but guess what? You're in a training situation at your college. You're really in a situation where you need to have assistive technology now while you're in school. And get used to using it, be comfortable with it. So I'm going to give you that website. That's www.ask, the word ask as K and the word janj.org. So the whole website is www.askjan.org. So why would you do that? Your college is not responsible to purchase assistive technology that only works for you. So you can look for a community-based organization that can help. And also evaluate what the college has to offer. What assistive technology is available in their computer labs, in their libraries, in different locations on the campus, and make an assessment for yourself. Also, is there possible support for you through the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation in your area? Look up their local office number and call them to sign up for an appointment. Talk about their services. Their services help people to plan for and provide solutions to starting college or other job training employment. Their goal is to help you get employment while removing barriers due to a disability. Another idea is to contact their counterpart for individuals with vision impairment or blindness. That's called the Department of Services for the Blind. Or contact the Department of Developmental Disabilities for Individuals with Developmental or Intellectuities. Really, your go-to staff for help at your college, I am calling, quote, services to students with disabilities, end quote. This department at colleges in the US may have any name. It could be any name, such as access services. It could be called Disabled Student Services or DSS. It could be called the Department of Student Accommodations or other names. But for our podcast, we'll call this office services to students with disabilities or SSD. My guidance to you is this: make an appointment with services to students with disabilities and ask these questions many months before you decide to enroll in classes. And there's a strategy behind this. Ask what services do you offer for students who need accommodation for their diagnosis, starting with college entry requirements. That means meetings with various departments that I've just described, financial aid, registration, etc. Can you put a plan in place for me? So this is a quote, these are questions that I want you to ask, Services for Students with Disabilities. Can you put a plan in place for me to accommodate entry requirements such as meeting with my advisor, meeting with the financial aid office or registration staff? I will need help due to my diagnosis. Another question you can ask is: Can you provide assistance before I qualify for classroom accommodations under section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act? What kind of support can I receive before I enroll? Do you provide early registration so that I can organize the services that I need in time for the beginning of class? That's really important. It takes time for the College Services for Students with Disabilities staff to put your documentation together that you've provided to them and look at the classes you're taking and make a plan with you that they feel would be best. So give them that time and help them as soon as possible. At any time during your enrollment, if you um if you end up having a diagnosis that is unexpected, maybe you have a mobility impairment, maybe you've had even a temporary illness, it's really important that you talk with them immediately. So you can talk with them at any time during your enrollment. Ideally, if you're able to give them information about your diagnosis before classes begin and way before classes begin, it just cuts down the stress for both of you, and you have a clear idea then, as do they, of how you're going to be accommodated at that college. Here's another question you can ask. What has worked well for other students that need access at the point of entry to the college? In other words, what other services have they provided to students just like you, who have a diagnosis just like you do? That's a great question to ask them. And the last question would be: do you need anything from me to approve me for entry services accommodations? So ask them candidly, you know, what support can I bring to you that will make this process work? The SSD office provides services to students based on Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. So these are the two civil rights laws that primarily guide and direct and drive those services from services to students with disabilities at any college that receives federal financial support. And that can be a vocational school as well. Section 504 provides support for college students, and your diagnosis must negatively impact a major life activity. You may not have heard that phrase before, major life activity, but here's what it means. Major life activity is an activity that we depend upon in our daily lives. For example, breathing, seeing, hearing, learning, sitting, standing, walking, speaking, reading, writing, looking at these major life activities, do you see those activities that might impact you in college? Reading, hearing, seeing, speaking, writing, all of these impact the requirements of college students, and there are many more requirements as well. So, in summary, if the medical or mental health concern that you have impacts your ability to learn, you would be eligible for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. And there's much more to this. When you work with your college services to students with disabilities, you can request auxiliary aids, services, or a reasonable modification to class requirements. But these requests that you make must be reasonable. This means that there's not a huge financial cost to the college. The great news is that most college accommodations have very little or no cost, and for you, those accommodations are free. Colleges regularly provide assistance for students in an alternative manner. In other words, they can accomplish the same goal just in a different way. And you've been doing that already in your life, managing the diagnosis that you have. So let's try and answer the questions that I put out about how you make a successful interaction with your first point of entry to the college. First of all, it depends on your diagnosis and what you need. That may seem odd that you must be very specific about what you need, but you do in order to help others to help yourself. So in the first example, if you have a reading disability, a vision impairment, or writing impairment, and you must fill out lots of required forms for your college, you'll need to communicate with services for students with disabilities and ask them what is their process for helping students with the diagnosis that you have. For example, they may have an early registration day or times when you can meet with advisors online, complete applications that are required for financial aid, admissions paperwork, or registration paperwork. Each college is different, but under Section 504 and the ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, they will come up with a plan that has worked for other students. So ask them for this plan and how you can receive that support. Please make direct contact with Services for Students with Disabilities or whatever its name may be. Contact them by phone, make a phone meeting with them and ask these questions above about how you can receive the help with the entry requirements you must fulfill. In the second example, I have given to you, it is so important that you would share that you have symptoms that are exacerbated under stress and what happens when those symptoms are heightened, the type of help that you need from the college, and you need to explain all of that. If you have any documentation of your diagnosis, and we're talking about a panic attack here, for example, if you have a prescription note from your licensed clinical social worker, or your psychologist, or psychologist, I'm sorry, or psychiatrist or a community services program that is treating you for panic attacks, bring this documentation with you and the phone number and a name and email address so that this is a first start in getting the process going with your college. Just bring documentation if you can. And because I'm not your college representative in this regard, just know that each college has a solution for you and a program of how to get these requirements met while working with your privacy of your health documentation and their requirements to provide services to you. So what I'm working towards in this podcast specifically is that you keep going forward with your applications and requirements for entry into college, but that you do not turn around and go out the door and give up on college because the system looks insurmountable and people don't understand you. You have to help them understand what you need in a confidential way. I'm just so very concerned about you not um allowing the services to be received by you. Um, your needs are important and they need to be understood by the college staff. So many students have not known how to manage these big systems that colleges operate with. It's worth it to persist, it's worth it to explore what's there. It's important that you choose a college that will do a great job, a job of integrity and support and welcome for you, and not compromise what you need in regards to accommodation in your college classes and in starting college. There's a way that services to students with disabilities can protect that confidentiality that you legally are entitled to. And also, it's important that you protect that too. You do not need to be known or identified as a person with a diagnosis. You need to be known and identified as a college student, meeting the requirements that each department has. And this podcast is really focused on self-advocacy and helping you problem solve what you're going to encounter with colleges. Along with this, I'm really strongly encouraging you to choose a college that will welcome you. So think about this. If you're gonna go out and purchase a car, you want to know that that car is going to perform, that you're going to want to know what consumer report says about that vehicle that you're um thinking about purchasing. You're gonna want to know what kinds of problems that engine has had in the past. You want to know if you could afford it, you want to know that the people that are selling you the car are people of integrity and will stand behind the warranty that they've told you about. So if you're buying a car, thinking about this vehicle that you can depend upon, why wouldn't you kick the tires of the college that you're considering attending? You're going to be spending money at that college, you're going to be determining your future at that college, you're going to be depending upon people to steer you away from potential mistakes and keep you in a positive path to graduation and a great job. That's your goal. So make sure that you validate your experience in the future with your school by talking with Services for Students with Disabilities now. Do it now. I think the worst thing that you can do is just show up at the college and expect to navigate yourself through that without talking with the SSD office. I'm sure someone will help you, but it might feel uncomfortable. And this is all your choice. I'd like for you just to be kind to yourself and request the support. Sometimes college classes have chairs that have attached desks, and they're hard to get into and out of. Colleges actually have surplus furniture, and sometimes there's even surplus furniture in the classroom. It could be a small table and a different kind of chair. These are solutions for pain management, and also so much more can be requested for classroom accommodation, but it also works for those initial meetings that you would have with your college. You could ask for a short meeting online instead of in-person. You can request a Zoom meeting or a Microsoft Teams meeting or simply a phone call with your financial aid office or the admissions office or the enrollment services or advising. So understanding your needs and asking for the things that you think could be helpful. This is your first step in taking care of yourself and making sure that you're welcomed at the college and have some relief from the stress of that being of doing new things and doing them successfully. The work that the Services for Students with Disabilities Office does is very extensive. Their work reviews your medical or mental health documentation to approve or deny you for an accommodation plan, an accommodations plan that gives you an equal opportunity to succeed in college coursework. They work with two key laws. I've talked about them briefly here, but again, there's Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Section 504 covers your need for classroom accommodations called auxiliary aids, services, and reasonable modification of a class. The ADA covers access to information, transportation, communication, and all public areas on the campus. They're responsible for this decision, and you are responsible to provide documentation of disability, which is your diagnosis from a professional diagnostician. This helps them to understand and validate your request for assistance. Now, the password to education does not make the decision for the college. Our work helps you bring documentation together, understand your civil rights, and consider your symptoms when requesting accommodations in college. So I want you to be clear about your civil rights in college. If you have a disability that impacts a major life activity, and major life activities are those things that we do every day. So in this podcast, I've given you a lot of information to assess. So it's time for a quiz. If you have a reading disability that requires you to read and reread printed materials multiple times to gain an understanding, how will you fill out the application for federal application for student aid with a line of students behind you waiting for help? How do you get help in this situation? I think the answer is meet with Services for Students with Disabilities before any meeting on campus. Ask what they can do to support you. If you're a student with diabetes that most frequently check your blood sugar, drink and snack to prevent a low blood sugar event, how will you stay stable if you're in a waiting room for an advisor where no food or drink is allowed in the room? Do you snack and drink anyway? Do you share confidential medical information with your advisor? Like what do you do in that situation? And my answer would be before you enroll in classes, learn about what the college offers. If this school is able to offer what you need. So talk with services to students with disabilities and find out what their answer would be for you. In your first encounter with your college's registrar's office, where you sign up for classes, how will you deal with pain management from a recent injury, especially if you feel like you have to stand in line and wait your turn for an extended period of time? My answer to that would be before you register for classes and commit to this college. Meet with Services for Students with Disabilities and find out if SSD will offer the accommodations that will support you. Do the work with meeting with SSD, asking questions and learn what support is offered. You can do this if you are an advocate for a college student. Without disclosing the student's name, call SSD and get the answers needed. And thank you so much for walking this path to college with 504 and our ADA services. My listener, use the information here to learn so much more. And in our upcoming podcast, I'll be speaking about common 504 accommodations. Please join me for this. We're going to be talking about the different categories of disability and why would a college provide an accommodation for that diagnosis? And what type of accommodation has worked in the past in my work experience that's common for colleges across the US. So that's going to be an important podcast for you. I want you to join me for it. And that's upcoming, that will be the next one that I'll be creating, and that will be several of them in a row. So if you're looking for specific information about your diagnosis or you're an advocate and you're working with someone else, please listen in, stay tuned, and thank you for allowing me to navigate your path to college. Thank you so much for listening today. There's a lot to learn. And thank you for being an advocate for students and helping students with disabilities to become a strong self-advocate. All right, this is Krista Shaw, your vocational rehab counselor and navigator to higher education. You take care, have a great day, and I'll be talking with you soon. Bye for a while.