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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 00:30
Close the door!
Griffin Wright 0:21
You're listening to Woroni radio producer Ngunnawal and Ngambri land,
Grace Williams 0:26
have you gotten an EAP before? If you have any kind of disability carer or athlete responsibilities, you probably have heard about the education access plan.
Grace Williams 0:36
Okay, so this semester, I'm getting adjustment changes, so I'm going to try and get this application done before semester starts. I'll also be making little voice notes on my phone as I go through the process.
Grace Williams 0:47
The ANU accessibility website says that the EAP is a document that covers reasonable adjustments in classes, assessments and exams for a student, the student can utilize this document to receive special exam arrangements, extensions on assessments, flexible attendance or alternative attendance of tutorials in class or in lecture, supports and adjustments, assistive technologies and other supports. To get an EAP for the first time, you need to create an account with their student access portal and complete the registration form, which includes you writing the purpose of your registration, your disability and the adjustments you need. This can be difficult if you have never been given a set list of adjustments you require to study. This can make the EAP application process especially difficult for first year students and students with a newly diagnosed disability. It takes a while to figure out how you function within the limitations of your disability, and that can make crucial adjustments you may need slip through the cracks of your application.
Grace Williams 1:49
How about we go straight into EAPs? Back to serious stuff. Would you say there's a lack of transparency between accessibility and ANU students?
Florence Cooper 1:58
I think there has been partly because there's been differences in the way certain like certain parts of policy are applied by different people that we often have trouble. We can advise students about what's going to happen when they're requesting a certain accommodation or trying to get one implemented, and we can say, well, this is what we think has happened in the past, but if they get a different person to the person who's processed the other application in the past, the outcome could be different. There is no way of us knowing that. We've also tried recently and over the last couple of years to get a sort of compendium of all of the different accommodations you can get on an EAP, and there has been reluctance on the part of accessibility to actually make any sort of information about that available. I understand it because they do want to work with students on a case to case basis. But the problem is that if you don't, so when you get 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. And I was I was lucky when I first got my EAP that I'd already been in the DSA and talking about what accommodations you could get, and talking to people with similar conditions about what accommodations they found useful. And so I was able to come in and request a few things that they didn't mention in my interview. But if a student is getting an EAP before they've had contact with us, it's difficult for them to know what they can request. So I suppose that's an area in which there's not great transparency with accessibility.
Griffin Wright 3:47
We've also had issues in the past because A, the policy itself is quite vague and open to interpretation, and B, it's hard to actually find the policy. I spent a couple of hours last year trying to navigate the policy library on the ANU website, and it's very unintuitive. It's not clear where the policy is, it's not clear what each policy entails. It's not clear what the difference between a policy and a procedure is, and it's not clear how these policies and procedures are supposed to play out in real life. Because of this, if there are any issues, it's quite hard to counter them, because the policy just is either not there or super vague. Most students just don't have the capacity to be dealing with that.
Florence Cooper 4:40
One of the examples of policy being a bit vague or having holes in it, I've been doing a lot of research recently about the recording of teaching activities, and part of our problem is that there are several different types of teaching activities. So we're talking lectures, lectures, seminars, workshops, tutorials. None of those terms are defined. Actually, I think electoral is defined in a glossary somewhere. That glossary should have those terms defined, but it doesn't, for whatever reason that was recommended by a review that was done of the policy and procedure of teaching recordings, but it hasn't been implemented. I don't know anything about the progress of when that's going to be updated, and until it is updated, it limits our ability to go, Okay, well, you've got a tutorial that won't be recorded, you've got electoral you've got a workshop. The lines, particularly between lectorial seminar and workshop, are blurry as anything, and there are different requirements about which of those have to be recorded, and until those terms are defined by policy, we can't really go to a college and go we think you've labeled this wrong
Grace Williams 5:48
As of the time of recording the ANU policy Library's glossary for student policy and procedures only provides definitions for two of these terms, a tutorial and a seminar. According to the ANU, a tutorial provides for group based exploration of material arising in or from lectures or other group teaching events. It is not the only contact for a course. It is led by a tutor. The ANU also provides the following definition for a seminar. A seminar provides for group exploration of material that has been set for prior study. It is typically found in advanced undergraduate or postgraduate teaching. It may be the only contact for a course. It is usually led by the course convener or by guest presenters.
Grace Williams 6:31
What have been your experiences or perspectives on the need to self advocate, especially for the large shift for first years who may not have had to self advocate before. Do you have any comments on that?
Florence Cooper 6:43
Such a large portion of the work that we do is with students who have accommodations on their EAP. So they're supposed to be getting them. And a course convener, for whatever reason, hasn't implemented them. Sometimes we are helping them, like gently nudge and say, Oh, by the way, I'm supposed to have this. And look, usually conveners are very nice about it. Most conveners are really lovely human beings who want to do the best. Some conveners are confused about what they're supposed to be doing, and that's something we can help with. Some conveners don't want to implement certain...
Griffin Wright 7:17
accommodations,
Florence Cooper 7:18
accommodations! Thank you, Griffin, for whatever reason, and that's where it gets tricky. But absolutely there's not very clear ways to escalate that as well. And the way to escalate it is very student involved. Any student who's a member of the DSA, we're happy to help with that, but it still is a really big burden on students, because if your convener is not doing something, you have to ask them to do it. If they refuse, you then have to go to the head of the school or Dean of Students, or all sorts of big, scary things. And there could be, in theory, a much more streamlined, depersonalized way of doing that that would really reduce it if we had a central reporting mechanism for EAPs not being implemented properly, and then accessibility, assuming they were properly staffed, could follow up on those things and communicate to the conveners that certain things need to happen. That would be really great if those complaints were automatically sent off to the head of school or Dean of Students, or whoever it's relevant to send them off to, that would be great, but it's a lot of emailing on a student's part, and a lot of one on one meetings, which involve sort of appeals to conveners better nature. And it is a very intense process, and a lot of students do just go, I'll suffer through without it.
Griffin Wright 8:36
The other thing is that there are a lot of disorders and disabilities, where the average age of onset is around 18 years old. When you're just starting university for the first time, that, by itself, is a very difficult process of being diagnosed and coming to terms with the new disabled version of yourself, but to also have to be dealing with institutional ableism for the first time with no idea where to turn that's just a very intense thing to be trying to get students to do when they're also dealing with every other difficult part of university life. First years should be mainly concerned with figuring out the chiefly library system and the order that the books go in and figuring out their new social life and all of the normal first year problems, but to be having disability issues and institutional ableism issues on top of that, it's just way too difficult.
Grace Williams 9:36
Okay, so I just filled out my EAP application. This is an update request because I've got a new diagnosis, so I'll have to go through the same process as the new student would, just minus the registering for accessibility. My psychologist, who's going to be providing the documentation as well, helped me draft a list of reasonable adjustments for my application. And so hopefully I haven't missed anything.
Grace Williams 10:04
After you've finished your registration form, then you need to go to your doctor or another relevant health professional and get them to fill out a form stating your disability, their opinion on its severity and how long they think it will last, along with their recommendations for adjustments.
Grace Williams 10:20
I've just sent off my email to my psychologist to ask if she can fill out my supporting forms, and in this I sent her a list of what I'm applying for so she can make sure it's included in her statement. My psychologist doesn't charge me to do this, but I know that a lot of other health professionals do
Grace Williams 10:41
Any and all adjustments you require in your EAP has to be stated in both your registration form and your health professional supporting form, although these can include diagnostic papers if you have a more complex condition, this can be really difficult to attain, as seeing a doctor is not only expensive, but your doctor may not be all that supportive of your medical condition or your needs. In addition, your doctor doesn't know the exact requirements of each course you're doing, so they may miss important adjustments thinking that these situations are unlikely to come up. For example, I have issues with presenting in public because of my disability. However, this was an issue that never came up until the end of my second year where an oral presentation was a requirement of one of my classes, and I had to get a new documentation form from my doctor to prove that this was an issue for me.
Florence Cooper 11:31
There are lots of times where disabled students are forced to go to doctors when they don't need to go to doctors. I mean, a problem with that is just that we have limited supplies of GPS and other medical professionals in Canberra and right across Australia, and they don't need to be tied up doing paperwork that doesn't need to happen. It places a burden on students who are already struggling, and on medical professionals and an industry that is struggling. If it doesn't need to absolutely happen, it shouldn't, if you already have an EAP for the semester, and then halfway through the semester you need additional accommodations, even if they are accommodations as sensible and straightforward as needing to eat and drink in class, because you are taking medication that requires you to eat and drink, which could be approved with just a common sense conversation, they still require additional documentation, so you need to go to a medical professional and have them explicitly write down that you need that extra accommodation.
Grace Williams 12:35
Okay, so my psychologist sent back the forms today, so I'm going to submit all my forms and stuff tonight, also with neurodevelopmental disabilities such as autism spectrum disorder or ADHD, you have to provide your diagnostic paperwork to the accessibility office. While this is understandable, to prove your disability, diagnostic reports can have very sensitive information on them. They can include intimate recounts of personal history and relationships that can be inappropriate to hand over to an office of people that you don't know. I've also had to include my diagnostic paperwork, which is around 20 pages total of like my background and struggles I've had with my medical condition. So I guess A&I are getting a deep dive into my life.
Florence Cooper 13:19
When a student is undiagnosed. It doesn't mean the condition is not affecting them. And part of the problem with ANU policy and the way it's being implemented is that it's very, very reliant on diagnoses. And there are disabled people who don't have diagnoses. You can be disabled and not have a medical professional say that, because that's not how disability works. If you have a system that only will give accommodations to people who have that medical certificate, you have a whole lot of people who don't who will be missing out.
Griffin Wright 13:51
And it's reinforcing existing systems of oppression, right? Like the people who go longest without a diagnosis, are people who are perceived as women, people of color, people from rural and regional Australia, all of the groups where it's already very difficult. If they're also disabled, they're unlikely to be getting a diagnosis. Even if they do have a diagnosis, they're unlikely to be getting the support they need with it. They're unlikely to have support systems that are designed with them in mind, and they're also unlikely to have parents who are able to hold their hand through the process, because their parents were facing the same institutional barriers as them, probably to a higher degree, for some groups,
Florence Cooper 14:39
This is a point I'm not actually completely across the policy on this, but I think that's one of the advantages of the sort of health practitioner report system, is that it's just a medical professional saying, yes, they have a diagnosis. I don't need to show you all the evidence for that. This is what they need, but it's not quite as invasive.
Griffin Wright 14:56
Well, it depends on the diagnosis, because there are different requirements. Assignments for different types of diagnoses, which can be another challenging thing if you've got multiple different diagnoses and you're not entirely sure what each of them is classified as and what you're supposed to do with that information, that's again, a very large burden to be putting on students.
Grace Williams 15:20
Lastly, you must have a meeting with an accessibility team member over zoom. The main issue with this is the infamous wait times for these meetings with the accessibility office.
Florence Cooper 15:29
For anyone who doesn't know, accessibility is very understaffed at the moment, and it's causing enormous delays in the processing of all paperwork, particularly registration with accessibility and the requests for EAPs existing requests. So people who already have EAPs and are just needing to get it renewed seem to be processing relatively quickly, but anything that requires them to look through your paperwork or to meet with you is taking a very, very long time. It's week six. I still know people who have not got their EAP in place, even though they put in the paperwork in the recommended time in the first few weeks of term. So it's been a big problem. We have been working with students and with accessibility to try and get people who don't have their EAPs accommodations in the meantime, but it's a process that should be working and would be working if they paid people money to do jobs.
Grace Williams 16:30
Okay, so I submitted my application for a new EAP this semester on the seventh of July, which is two weeks before semester began, and I just got my meeting for the 30th of July, so that's about a three week wait period between submitting my documents and getting an appointment. So slay for me, I guess.
Grace Williams 16:55
And let's face it, the more weeks you wait for an EAP to be approved and written, the more weeks you are studying without your needed adjustments. If you have support documentation that lasts more than a semester and your condition doesn't change, this process will become simpler. You just need to submit a semester renewal form, and they carry over your previous supports to the next batch of classes. But there is one more important downside to the EAP your teacher might just ignore it. This is far too common, and the only way for it to be reprimanded is if you report them.
Grace Williams 17:27
So can we talk about bad teachers in particular, but the lack of consequences for teachers who don't implement your EAP supports?
Florence Cooper 17:35
Yeah, I think this partly goes back to what we talked about earlier in that there is no central way of reporting this, that it is individual students emailing and there's not a greater escalation process. It's not transparent, to be perfectly honest. It's also a problem with ANU policy. Anu policy doesn't actually require course conveners to do a whole lot if they don't want to, if something's on your EAP and the course convener and the head of your school and the head of your college don't want to implement it at the end of the day, they kind of don't have to. You can sue them, but no one's going to do that.
Griffin Wright 18:12
As someone who wants to be a professional nerd someday, ie an academic, there would be serious consequences, potentially for kicking up a stink about ableism. If I want to work at the University in a field that is quite small in Australia, I cannot risk getting a bad name for myself by telling everyone such and such was ableist towards me. There are a lot of students at ANU who want to have a career in academia or in something related, and we have to constantly be thinking about our career prospects, and we have to make sure that we are likable, because the reality is that so much of our career trajectories depend upon us being liked and accepted by the people who work here and have a name here.
Grace Williams 19:12
So I had my meeting with accessibility a few weeks ago, and as soon as I got my EAP, I sent it to my course conveners, but I also asked for meetings in their office hours to discuss adjustments in my EAP. You don't have to do this, but I find it's good to get clarification on how they adjust things specific to your course. It also helps if there are things you need while attending a class or doing class related activities that might be looked over in your EAP.
Grace Williams 19:37
Next episode, we will be discussing the extenuating circumstances application, which includes things like deferred exams and large extensions. Until then, I'm Grace, and this has been the frequent flyers podcast. See you next time.
Grace Williams 19:54
I would like to thank Griffin Wright, Flory Cooper and Mira Robson, along with the entire Disabilities Student Association for all their insight and information on these processes. I'd like to thank the Woroni radio team, especially Cate. George and Caoimhe. Like to thank the ANU policy library and accessibility and finally, the Woroni board... and Wanda.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai