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At ANU, the term ‘Frequent Flyer’ started appearing in mid-2024 as a means to describe students who frequently use academic disability support while studying at university - a term implying some form of advantage to utilising the programs and services designed to ensure academic equity in higher education. But when seen from the perspectives of those relying on said services, receiving support becomes all the more complicated. Join Grace as she dives into the complexities of disability politics at ANU, exploring the Education Access Plan, the Extenuating Circumstances Application, and Late Withdrawal.
Written and Edited by Grace Williams, with contributions by the ANU Disabilities Student Association.
Produced by Woroni Radio on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land.
Transcription-accessible format available at https://feeds.transistor.fm/the-frequent-flyers-podcast-disability-supports-at-anu
Speaker 1 0:00
We would like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal and ngambri people who are the traditional custodians of the land on which Woroni is created. We pay respects to elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge that the name Woroni was taken from the Wadi Wadi nation without permission, and we are striving to do better for future reconciliation.
Speaker 2 0:18
Woroni radio...
Grace Williams 0:22
If you've ever needed a large extension, a deferred exam, or a change to your assessment weighting, you've probably filled out an extenuating circumstances application. This process used to be a range of separate applications you needed to fill out, but last year, they were combined into one overarching application process
Grace Williams 0:39
In the previous system, before ECA existed, teachers could adjust marks?
Florence Cooper 0:44
I have things on that, so don't ask for them to bring it back. It's not going to happen because it's not it's like illegal. They're not allowed to do it. It was a good thing in some ways, but it's yeah, that they had to get rid of it because they've been told they weren't allowed to do it anymore. Um, anymore, and it's not going to be something that ever, is ever going to come back. But there are a whole lot of other things that have changed. Yeah, so there's overarching policy that governs universities by teqsa. I don't know what that stands for, but it's the body that covers universities in Australia, and the university has been needing to change that for a while to get in line with that policy, and they finally have. So that's not something that is going to change, because it's not ANU's call.
Grace Williams 1:30
First things first, what can you get? If an ECA gets approved, you can receive one of four outcomes, an altered assessment due date of more than 10 working days from its original date, a deferred examination, an alternative assessment or a modified assessment weighting. To apply for an ECA, your assessment needs to be worth at least 20% of your final mark. Otherwise, you can consult your course convener to receive assistance. The grounds for an approved ECA are medical reasons, personal hardship reasons, compassionate reasons, elite athlete responsibilities, essential duties, such as being in the military or an emergency services volunteer, being a victim of some type of disaster, or indigenous Cultural duties, consistent with the ANU Reconciliation Action Plan. ECA applications used to be completed on ISIS, but are now completed through a separate application portal that you can access through ISIS's Manage my degree section. To complete an ECA, you must provide both a personal statement and supporting documentation. Both of these documents need evidence, stating the day that your personal circumstance began or changed, and how that circumstance impacted your ability to study.
Grace Williams 2:46
Moving on, I want to briefly touch on the requirement of a personal statement for a lot of these extenuating circumstances applications. Are they really necessary? Do they need to be compulsory?
Florence Cooper 2:58
No,
Griffin Wright 2:59
no speaking of emotionally draining processes, like it's another ridiculously stressful and draining thing that you're expecting students to have to go through when they have just been through something very difficult that they don't necessarily have the capacity to share yet, or don't necessarily have the capacity to share with the number of people that they are expected to share it with by demanding students make a personal statement, you are risking re traumatizing already vulnerable students, and it's just cruel and not necessary at all.
Grace Williams 3:37
Okay, so I thought it would be best to show you how to get into an ECA application by just applying for one myself. You go into ISIS first, and then manage my degree as normal. And it used to be like two options that you could choose from, and then fill out an ISIS form right the Manage my degree coursework section, where you've got your late withdrawals and such, and the ETA section, which used to be a few more options before that. Now there's this bold, underlined heading for extenuating circumstances application at the top of the page, and just like a random hyperlink, kind of like a Learn More section of an article that you're not really paying attention to. So I've clicked on that, and it's taken me to this Microsoft form, quite similar to the one for the College of Arts and Social Sciences, how they run their extensions. And if you click on ECA again, because there's also an extension option here as well, and you choose deferred exam or other adjustments, and if you click on either of those, because the process and layout for each is identical, you get to these funky looking tables where you write in your personal statement in a section and then upload your documents in another section. It really looks like someone had fun with the web design.
Griffin Wright 5:03
There are so many situations where students just don't have the kinds of proof that the university is asking for when it comes to things like late withdrawals and getting their exams delayed and that kind of thing, where something like there have been extraordinary circumstances, they just will not necessarily have a piece of paper that says how long they were out of commission, for what that involved, just how intensive it was. For example, a lot of students with chronic illness, it's self managed, so they they know when their chronic illness is bad and when they have no capacity, and in the early stages of a flare up, they might not be going to a doctor because there's no point, or because they straight up, don't have the capacity to be going to a doctor, so they won't have a piece of paper that says the illness started on This date and finished on this date, and those dates happened to coincide with when the exam was that, among other situations, it doesn't really make sense to be pushing the students so hard to be getting a piece of paper that just makes it harder for them to focus on what's really important, which is their own health and their recovery and being able to not have to stress about all the hoops at the university.
Florence Cooper 6:26
There are numerous examples I could give you, including from myself, where a process that is complicated and requires a really large burden of proof, supposedly to prevent people from gaming or taking advantage of the system has just stopped anyone actually applying.
Speaker 2 6:46
Through collaboration with the DSA, we came up with two correlating issues that come with ECA applications, which I've labeled the 'plan ahead paradox' and the 'disability domino effect'.
Grace Williams 6:57
I thought we could talk about something that I've named the plan ahead paradox, which is where, as a disabled person, especially when it comes to extensions, you are required to plan ahead for that extension. But if you do, are you really sick? That's what they ask when you're like, Okay, I'll get an extension three days before the due date. And they're like, but are you sick? Though? Because you could do that three days before.
Florence Cooper 7:19
So I have a condition, I've got ADHD, and that means most of the studying for assessment tasks I do happens last minute. That's just because my brain won't let me do it before then I take medication. It still doesn't change that. It's the reality that I live with. It's not an ideal reality. I can say that to anyone, but it's, it is the reality that I live with. What that means for me is that I generally use extensions for when I have, say, an exam week, I have three things in four days. I need to have spaces between my assessment tasks so that I have a couple of days to do the studying or the writing required for that assessment task, because I can't do something weeks in advance, because my brain just won't let me so I use my extensions to space out my assessment tasks, but because I don't want course conveners to think that I'm just throwing around my extensions willy nilly, I don't apply for extensions until the day or two before even if I know that I'm going to be using them for weeks in advance. Now, obviously, administratively, it would be much easier if people were applying for extensions earlier, but people don't feel like they can, because they don't feel like they'll be believed.
Griffin Wright 8:33
And it's this assumption that you're supposed to be thinking about your assignments, 24/7, and if you're not thinking about your assignments and only your assignments, then Sucks to be you like one of the reasons that a student may not be able to get things together in time to submit an extension request or to communicate with their lecturers is the same set of circumstances that's preventing them From doing the assignments. Sometimes things happen in your life where, shocker, you're not, first and foremost a student. You're a person who is sleeping in bed, or a person whose relative just died, or whatever other circumstance you can think of that may completely remove you from the student space. And I don't think it's fair to be demanding that much of students when they're going through something that hard, like it should always be the first priority to be looking after our health and wellbeing and having to constantly be stressed about getting in all of the paperwork on time makes it a lot harder to be able to recover and to look after ourselves.
Grace Williams 9:48
I want to talk briefly about what I'm also calling I've made a lot of phrases for this, calling this the disability domino effect, and this is sort of the idea of disabled people when we need. To fill in an ECA. We are sick at that time, and then we have to spend all of our energy, all of our spoons, to fill in this application. And that takes time away from getting better or completing the work that we need this application to extend or defer. And we get more behind, and we have to fill out more applications because we get more behind. Does anyone want to comment on that?
Griffin Wright 10:23
Dealing with chronic fatigue, it's very hard to predict how much energy you have, and that's quite frustrating. It can take a lot longer to recover than you expect it to take. You can be sitting up in bed, and just the act of sitting up, you can feel it physically draining your energy, and you do have to sit up to use a computer. That means that if I'm on 7% battery life, and it takes 6% battery to read a web form, then I'm not going to be able to do anything else for the rest of the day, and it's ridiculous that I have to budget my energy according to what the university requires me to prove about my own condition. When I should be able to sleep for a bit, wait until my battery is at at least 70% and then focus on my uni work, instead of, you know, pushing myself to fill out paperwork before anything else.
Florence Cooper 11:30
I think this problem particularly is bad during exam season, because you've got say, you've had a flare up, or something's happened that's affected your ability to do your first exam like say you're bedridden, if you're having to get out of bed and go to the doctor to get medical documentation that says I'm crook, I can't do this exam. You're probably going to do yourself further injury and not be able to do some of your later exams. Now if instead, you're allowed to submit it with just your EAP and then stay in bed for a couple of days. Instead, your body would be resting and recuperating, and you might be able to do some of your later exams. If you're not able to do that, you may have to defer more of them, which, of course, no one loves deferred exams. Really horrible thing. So there is, yeah, absolutely, this domino effect that your energy you're using to jump through the hoops that they need you to use impacts on your ability to actually do the other tasks.
Grace Williams 12:35
Now listen, when coming to this project, I knew I didn't have all the answers when it comes to making these processes easier to access for the people who need it, while also preventing it from being exploited. But what I do know is this, the ANU ECA process is so complicated that many students aren't receiving the help they need to complete their courses because they are simply too tired to go through these hoops and accessing them. And on top of this, disabled students are far more likely than their counterparts to be seen as getting unnecessary aid from the ANU. As Griffin wrote in his statement, some staff members have resorted to calling us frequent flyers.
Alex An 13:13
It's really just a way to dismiss the needs of disabled people and to act as though people are trying to game the system or access services more than they actually need those services.
Florence Cooper 13:22
I think one of the things that's at a root of a lot of the problems with accessibility at the ANU is a cultural institutional assumption that non disabled students will be attempting to get accessibility accommodations in order to give them an advantage over their other students, and that we need to prevent that from happening. Now I'm not saying that there are no non disabled students who attempt to get it. I don't know. What I do know is that the overly rigorous processes that are put in place to prevent that from happening have a very negative impact on disabled students and their ability to get disability accommodations.
Grace Williams 14:11
Next episode, we'll be covering the late withdrawal process, including its drastic changes between the first and second semesters of 2024 Until then, I'm Grace, and this has been the frequent flyers podcast. See you next time.
Grace Williams 14:34
I would like to thank Griffin Wright, Florrie Cooper, Mira Robson, the entire Disabilities Students Association, for all their insights and information on these processes, the Woroni radio team, Cate, George, Caoimhe and Alex, who made a reappearance this episode, the ANU website's information on ECAs and the Woroni board
Unknown Speaker 14:56
and Wanda a-and Wanda.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai