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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
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:You're listening to Woroni Radio, producer Ngunnawal and Ngambri Land.
Speaker 3:Have you ever applied for an EAP before? Or for a deferred exam? Maybe even withdrew from your courses after the semester ended? Well, if you have, you've probably thought to yourself, this is bloody hard, and you wouldn't be alone. Each semester, plenty of students must use these processes in order to survive at university, and due to the burden of proof these students must provide, it can make utilising these processes feel impossible.
Speaker 3:But that's where we come in. Welcome to the Frequent Flyers Podcast, your guide to academic supports and disability on Woroni Radio. I'm Grace, and I'll be your host. And throughout this series, I will be joined by Griffin and Florrie from the ANU Disabilities Students Association or the DSA for short. Introduce yourselves.
Speaker 3:Who are you? What do you do? What is the DSA? Griffin, do you wanna go first?
Speaker 4:Hi. I'm Griffin. I use he/they pronouns. I'm a co officer of the DSA, which is the Disabilities Student Association, along with Florrie.
Speaker 2:Hi. I'm Florrie. I use she/her pronouns, and I am the other disabilities co officer. You may be asking,
Speaker 3:what on earth is a frequent flyer, and what does it have to do with disability? Well, in a statement made to us by DSA co officer Griffin Wright and read by our lovely Woroni producer Alex, they explain this term's history.
Speaker 5:Frequent flyer is a term that has been used for a while by various staff members at ANU. They use this term to refer to students who regularly engage with accessibility services. So that's things like getting extensions for majority of your assessments or applying for ECAs on multiple occasions. Staff members who use the term tend to mean it in a derogatory fashion. My sister is a nurse, and she also hears it used for people who often refer to as hypochondriacs.
Speaker 5:It's really just a way to dismiss the needs of disabled people and to act as though people are trying to gain the system or access services more than they actually need those services. Hopefully, we don't have to explain why this is ridiculous. Disabilities are usually lifelong. They tend to impact you over and over again in very similar ways. We access these services because we need them, not because we get some kind of kick out of grabbing disability freebies.
Speaker 5:Florrie and myself, among others, at the Disabilities Students Association have started to reclaim the term. It's such a blatantly and ridiculously ablest term that feels right to take it back. And, hey, maybe if we call ourselves frequent flyers often enough, we might get some kind of reward system for being brave enough to keep getting the support we need despite all of the barriers preventing us from doing so.
Speaker 3:In this podcast, we'll be diving into the academic processes of the education access plan, the extenuating circumstances application, and the late withdrawal process. All of these systems are vital to students with disabilities at ANU, but each comes with their own set of challenges, creating roadblocks to students seeking the assistance they need. Disability supports have
Speaker 2:been long standing and well entrenched, but they are constantly changing, with constant auditing, action plans and overhaul by university management, with the intention of simplifying the process, but often impacting students in unforeseen ways. There are always slight changes, so any policy that governs these things comes under review every few years, generally about five years, and things change with that, which affects how different colleges implement things. There is also change that happens because a lot of the policy in these areas is quite vague or quite open to interpretation. The interpretation changes as personnel change, and sometimes that's personnel at places like accessibility or student safety and well-being or the places that are advising students, advising course conveners and lecturers about how to apply things. So that changes as the people who are in charge of those departments change.
Speaker 2:It also changes as attitudes within colleges change. Colleges have a lot of power at ANU to decide how they're implementing policy, particularly when there's wiggle room. And in different colleges, there's different ethoses and opinions on policy. And that as those cultures change and as the people in charge of those colleges change, the application as it actually affects students changes a lot.
Speaker 4:There's also always review boards and task forces and all those types of things. There was a disability action plan review last year, which recommended there be an EAP review task force as well. There's also mental health task force and inclusive communities board, and there's basically almost always some kind of group dedicated to figuring out what needs to change.
Speaker 3:Let's start with a brief overview of our disability support procedures with the well known education access plan or EAP. The EAP is a document that covers any reasonable adjustments a student may require in classes, assessments and exams due to disability, carer responsibilities or elite athlete responsibilities. Students can utilise this document to receive special exam arrangements, extensions on assessments, flexible or alternative attendance of tutorials, in class or in lecture supports and adjustments, assistive technologies and other supports. It is a very all encompassing service. But the full list of adjustments that EAP can provide is not publicized by its managing office accessibility, formerly known as access and inclusion, which both myself and the DSA have sought multiple times.
Speaker 3:So when you get
Speaker 2:an EAP, you sit down with a case manager, and they suggest some things you might need. You suggest some things you might need. Your paperwork from your doctor suggests some things you might need. And if you don't have the information about what is available as a possibility, you can't make requests that are informed. But if a student is getting an EAP before they've had contact with us, it's difficult for them
Speaker 3:to know what they can request. Episode two will be covering EAPs, their functions, and what challenges students may be facing with the current EAP framework. The next process we'll be covering is the Extenuating Circumstances Application, which for time I'll be calling the ECA. The Extenuating Circumstances Application is an academic process to grant an extension of ten working days, a deferred examination, an alternative assessment or a modified weighting of the assessment for students suffering from what the university has stated as previously unknown and unavoidable incidents that have a demonstrable effect and significant impact on the student's ability to study or undertake an assessment item. ECAs.
Speaker 3:Let's go to ECAs. In the previous system before ECA existed, teachers could adjust marks.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 2:They had to get rid of it because they've been told they weren't allowed to do it anymore, and it's not going to be something that ever is ever gonna 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.
Speaker 2: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 gonna change because it's not ANU's call.
Speaker 3:In episode four, we will be covering the process of late withdrawal. This process is for students who endure some event or circumstance that was unavoidable and unexpected that causes the incompletion of their courses. There are multiple categories of reasoning behind submitting a late withdrawal application, but I believe the main points to focus on are the medical and personal family reasons.
Speaker 4:Anyone who's had to overload before knows the documentation required to overload is very minimal. You just need to upload your academic transcripts to prove that your GPA is okay, and then they will accept you taking on an extra course. The fact that you have to go through so many hurdles to then withdraw from that very same course is very silly and doesn't seem to make sense to me apart from the perspective that making academia harder for yourself is encouraged and making it easier for yourself is discouraged.
Speaker 2:The documentation needed for late withdrawal is a lot. Reading through that when I needed to get the documentation, I could hear the tone through it of we won't believe you unless you jump through every single tiny little hoop exactly perfectly.
Speaker 3:Hi. It's currently bush week, and there have been changes to the late withdrawal application process as I've been editing. So throughout episode four, we will be switching between my conversation with Griffin and Flory from semester one and the current updates by me as of semester two. Shit happens, I guess, and the shit is that these processes are always changing. And finally, in episode five, we'll be bringing together all we've learned to paint a picture of what disability supports look like at ANU, how they
Speaker 4:can get better, and what the future of academia should look like in regards to disabled students. So I'm a massive fan of something called universal accessibility, which means that everything should be made as much as possible to be accessible to everyone regardless of documentation, regardless of diagnosis. I think it's possible to make a better university where fewer people need EAPs because university is a more accessible and friendly place. Accessibility helps everyone, not just disabled people.
Speaker 3:Until then, I'm Grace, and this has been the Frequent Flyers podcast. See you next time. Oh my god, have so many people to thank. Thank you to Griffin Wright, Florrie Cooper, Mira Rubson, the entire Disabilities Student Association for all their insight and information into these processes. The wonderful Alex Ahn for his dramatic reading of Griffin's statement, Cate Armstrong head of Woroni Radio, George Hogg former head of Woroni Radio and the very harried voice at the beginning of this episode, Caoimhe Grant former features EP, the ANU website I guess for all their policy information, and the Woroni Board.
Speaker 3:And Wanda!