By Madeline Ruebush
While Bakersfield College focuses on accommodating students with disabilities, faculty and staff with disabilities are behind the scenes, advocating for themselves.
How are staff struggling?
Between general awareness to physical inaccessibility, the staff at BC agree that some changes can be made.
Bernadette Madrid is a counselor in the DSPS office at Bakersfield College where she works with students with disabilities every day. One thing Madrid is trying to increase at BC is general disability awareness. Having once been able-bodied herself, she understands what it is like to be able-bodied and the ignorance that can come with it. (Quote?) Madrid wasn’t born with her disability, she acquired it after a combination of valley fever and diabetes caused her to lose her vision.
Although she loves her job and feels welcomed in her department, she thinks BC has room for improvement.
Her disability now allows her to connect with students on a level that abled-bodied counselors cannot. She is often told by students that she is the first person who “gets it,” as in she understands their needs without judgment or difficulty. She’s thankful for her ability to provide this feeling to her students.
Although the DSPS office is a welcoming one, Madrid still feels there is room for improvement. As someone who is blind, she has difficulty accessing Banner, a system that houses student and school data. She is also often given inaccessible documents and forms that neither she nor the student she is helping can access. She is emailed images or screenshots with vital information that she cannot access because there are no image descriptions, and she has noticed that the school website also has a lack of photo descriptions. Madrid has noted that overall there is a distinct lack of community for people with disabilities at BC, especially after COVID.
Francisco Lizarde also works at the DSPS department as a Media Specialist where he makes materials accessible to those who need it. He experienced similar frustrations as Madrid in 2020 when he was only a student attending BC online. Also being blind, he said that his experience with BC’s online program was mostly positive, but there was one professor that continually refused to give him proper accommodations that he had a right to ask for. Assignments and readings were not formatted correctly for his reading program. Without those accommodations, the class was inaccessible to him. Fransisco decided to simply drop the class instead of fighting for his right to have equal access to the class.
Now working at BC, he works to make sure students are provided with the books and programs they need to be successful in a class.
Lizarde has worked at other colleges before, and said that his experience in the DSPS office has been the most accepting and accommodating space he’s worked in. Outside the DSPS department though, he has found a few ways in which BC can improve. For example, for those who are visually impaired, there aren't a lot of ways for them to figure out how to get around by themselves. Lizarde personally uses two different apps to help him navigate, but he has noticed the lack of braille signage and the absence of a raised campus map. Because of this, he doesn’t really explore campus and sticks to the areas close to the DSPS office. The cafeteria has also proved difficult to navigate as someone who is blind. The cafeteria has no clear paths of travel and no clear sections for lines, ordering, etc. Lizarde said that when it gets crowded, it is very difficult for him to navigate. Additionally, smaller things, such as the cafe robot, are inaccessible.
Although not being able to use a robot that makes coffee for you might seem significant compared to bigger issues that people with disabilities face, these small issues are indicative of the general inattention to accessibility that non-disabled people have when it comes to decision-making. Whether it be a cafe robot or an event room with no accessible entrance, being able to immediately see when something is not accessible would save BC both time and money. Though seemingly a small part of overall accessibility, simple awareness of the needs of the disabled community will create a more understanding and empathetic culture at BC.
Although the DSPS department has fittingly created a welcoming and accommodating environment for their employees, staff in other departments feel differently.
Dean Andrea Thorson has been working at BC for over 13 years, first as a communications professor and now as Dean of Instruction for English for Multilingual Students (EMLS), Foreign Language & American Sign Language, and Philosophy. She is also the Faculty Lead for the KCCD Accessibility Committee.
Although Thorson has had disabilities for her whole career at BC, she hasn’t always felt safe enough to be “out” as a person with disabilities. Her disabilities weaken her body which can make it difficult for her to walk. When she would need her wheelchair, she would call in sick to hide her disability. She feared that asking for accommodations would put her job and career at risk.
While unfortunate, this fear is shared by the majority of people with disabilities, and it is a very real risk. According to Dean Andrea Thorson, being outwardly or knowingly disabled proves to be a detriment at BC, a theme observed in nearly every area of life for those who are disabled. The 2023 Disability Equality Index (DEI) report found that only 4.6% of employees at US companies identify themselves as disabled in the workplace while the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) diversity report estimated the prevalence of disability in the workplace to be 25%.
Thorson no longer hides her disability at BC, and she outwardly uses a cane, walker, and a wheelchair around campus, including meetings with the BC president and other officials on campus.
“I’m a constant reminder,” Thorson stated. “Abled-bodied people are forced to be uncomfortable and think and have empathy, and other disabled people think they can be in those positions.”
Now that she’s “out” as disabled, much like Madrid, she finds that students and staff alike see her as someone safe to express their experiences to.
“Because I am a person with a disability, people come to me when they won’t go to other people.”
She often finds herself advocating for them, reaching out to those who can change things or submitting requests. She explained, “Sometimes it’s on the record, it’s very formal, other times it’s very quiet and in the background because there is a level of fear and distrust based on how people with disabilities have to move about the world.”
This is an important concept. Just because an individual is not personally hearing stories of inaccessibility at BC, doesn’t mean that they are not there. Thorson hears issues of accessibility on campus from students, faculty, coworkers, and friends, along with her own experiences. She has missed meetings because a doorway was too narrow for her wheelchair to get through or an elevator was down. In one notable example, Thorson shared her experience trying to get to a meeting with the BC president in the Executive Suit tower where she got stuck in a doorway. She called to let those in the meeting know why she was going to miss the meeting. She explained that this situation highlights the importance of representation of disabilities in BC’s higher positions. Her situation didn’t just create an uncomfortable scenario for her, it created an uncomfortable scenario for the President and other BC decision makers, illustrating how inaccessible infrastructure disrupts the lives of disabled people.
After this incident, she said that M&O were notified to fix the doors so that they weren’t so heavy, and she now has an easier time navigating the building. A lot of the time the solutions are simple, the problem just needs to be heard first.
Professor Christian Parker works in the history department at BC, and like Lizarde, also used to be a student. As someone who is blind, he knows “the ropes” when it comes to the resources available at BC for students and faculty…and the lack of.
Parker has also noticed that accessibility is lacking in online instruction, especially for blind students, saying that he finds that they are “often forgotten as far as making online instruction more accessible.”
Construction has posed an additional barrier for Parker. Although he doesn’t venture far from the Humanities building where his classes are, construction can make it hard for him, and other blind students and staff to navigate even familiar spaces.
After being asked what he would grade BC in terms of accessibility, he gave the school a C.
He continued, “...it might be a matter of being made aware of certain situations before they can be attended to. These things take a bit of time sometimes I think. I don’t think there is a la[ck] of desire or trying, just not always knowing what needs to be done.”
Within all of these perspectives, there lies a pattern: BC struggles with fulfilling the needs of disabled staff at BC. From navigating campus, to online programs and documents, to general disability awareness, the staff at BC know what needs to be done at BC to make it accessible. Then only one question remains: Will Bakersfield College listen?
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