The number of students with disabilities at this university has increased 18 percent over two years, echoing a nation-wide trend, but disabled students worry they may not have sufficient support on the campus.
Enrollment among disabled students nationally jumped 49 percent from 2000 to 2008, compared with a 27 percent increase in total students, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Despite the increases here and nationally, the campus’ Disability Support Services only has four counselors to advocate for and help more than 1,400 students. Of the four, two are part-time graduate students, and one exclusively advises those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.
With numbers increasing, some students are concerned that DSS will not be able to provide adequate service to those with disabilities, especially considering the case load per counselor.
“I don’t think that [DSS] is prepared,” junior American studies major Aaron Kaufman said. Kaufman has cerebral palsy and usually uses a wheelchair to navigate campus. “In order to accommodate the increasing numbers of students, the DSS counselors are overworked. They have been wonderful to me. But I think that there are just too many students per counselor.”
Kaufman transferred from Montgomery College in Rockville where there are five counselors for only 797 students with disabilities.
But Jo Anne Hutchinson, the head of DSS, said every student who needs help was getting it.
“I do believe that we are meeting the needs of the students,” she said. “We stay very busy, but I don’t know any student who hasn’t received the accommodations that they requested.”
The disabled population remains skeptical of DSS’s ability to accommodate their increasing numbers. At a forum on disability issues last week, students spoke about challenges they thought the administration was ignoring.
“Other institutions I’ve been involved with have had people on staff, so we didn’t have to ask students for help” taking notes or getting around, said Anthony Byrd, a senior government and politics major.
In the report, the GAO predicts the number of disabled students is going to continue to jump rapidly over the next several years and credits two pieces of federal legislation — the Higher Education Opportunity Act and the new G.I. Bill — with driving the expected increase.
This jump could mean even bigger problems for disabled students on the campus.
“[The university is] already struggling to meet the needs of students in terms of physical accessibility,” Kaufman said. “And accessibility projects have been delayed repeatedly and don’t seem to be a high priority for the administration.”
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