The University of Colorado Boulder’s Disability Services Office’s front door. (Avery Clifton/CU Independent)
The University of Colorado Boulder announced its new Center for Disability and Access earlier this year.
“This newly created center is dedicated to supporting students, faculty, staff and visitors with disabilities, as well as those requiring pregnancy- or religious-related accommodations,” said a statement on the CU Boulder website.
The new center combines functions of the Disability Services and the Americans with Disabilities Act Office. The now-combined offices are working to meet CU Boulder’s accessibility goals after students have expressed frustration with the previous services offered by the university.
Casey Boyd, a graduate student at CU Boulder, is the president of the Association for Students with Disabilities at the univeriity. He founded the organization after his first year as a graduate student.
“I noticed that a lot of my students who have disabilities didn’t seem to be getting the help that they should be getting, so I was trying to create kind of a support system for that,” he said.
Boyd said that the association’s reaction to the new center was “kind of a collective shrug.”
“I don’t think there’s really any expectation that this will make anything better,” he said.
The change comes after students have reported feeling dissatisfied with how Disability Services handled accommodation requests in the past.
“I didn’t realize quite how bad it was until I started hearing more from other people in the organization,” he said. “If someone has a disability that requires more than just time and a half or extra time on assignments, it’s extraordinarily difficult to get what is legally required.”
Boyd expressed concerns about the effects of accommodations not being met in the classroom.
“If students can’t get what they need to succeed academically, then everything else … matters a lot less,” Boyd said.
Boyd recalled the former vice president of the association, Ben Little, who is partially paralyzed.
Little described himself as a “manual wheelchair user who can use crutches for short distances.” As a former graduate student at the university, he claims that he was denied remote lecture accommodations after providing three doctor’s notes.
According to Little, his persistent medical issues and campus accessibility issues led him to take a leave of absence. He said he chose not to return after his leave of absence because the university was “not worth coming back to.”
Little described the difficulties of being a student while managing a disability.
“I’m trying to be a student. I’m trying to do research; I’m trying to do the things that I came here to do,” he said. “Instead, all I’m doing is managing my disability and managing the ridiculous barriers that have been put in front of me.”
Little said he feels that the university focused more resources on areas such as research funding rather than providing students with a support system. He urged CU Boulder to reallocate more resources to supporting marginalized students.
“Right now, we’re putting so much investment into bringing in these high-value research contracts that we’re neglecting the things that make the university feel like a community,” he said. “I would be putting emotional labor much higher on the list of what we need to be putting resources into.”
Little read an excerpt from a journal originally dated October 2023. He said he wrote it a few months before he realized he was “not going to be able to continue at CU.”
“We must create space for building an entirely new system. We are inside of a burning building,” he said, referring to Disability Services’ procedures. “We need to decide what is worth salvaging and get to the exits.”
Resources for student, visitor, event and workplace accommodations are now provided on the Center for Disability and Access’s website. The process of registering with disability service and accessing accommodations will remain the same for students.
“CU Boulder remains committed to ensuring access and creating inclusive campus environments that engage and support everyone that our institution serves,” CU spokesperson Nicole Mueksch said. “CU Boulder also complies with all federal and state civil rights laws. We’re committed to providing its programs and services without discrimination.”
The director of Disability Services was unavailable for comment on the new Center for Disability and Access.
“Over the coming months, the center will work on improving services, streamlining processes and building stronger collaborations to better support everyone on campus,” said an email sent by Disability Services on Feb. 3.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Avery Clifton at Avery.clifton@colorado.edu
