By David Rios
East Los Angeles College Disabled Students Program need to have their services available all day, because not all wheelchair users have powered chairs and they also need a way to get around faster.
I am a student at ELAC who is disabled and uses a wheelchair. I realized that most wheelchair users on campus have powered wheelchairs, which allows them to move around easier.
I do not have the luxury of a powered wheelchair. I have a manual wheelchair that has to be rolled and pushed on a daily basis.
I do not know if the people who built this campus did not pay any attention to how a wheelchair student gets around or not, but this needs to change.
The two buildings that I have my classes in are the E7 and F7 buildings.
All student services including the Disabled Student Services are located at the very bottom of the hill. I feel very discouraged to even go to any of the student services, because if I roll down there is no guarantee I will get back up to the top of the hill -especially if I have to go to class.
When I brought this to the attention of the disabled student services they assured me that they have a cart where I can roll up a ramp and be secured. I have used this cart to get to class a handful of times.
The major issue I have with this is that when I need this form of transportation to get up the hill and to class it is not always made available. I have experienced first-hand where there has been numerous occasions that I needed to go up the hill.
I would go to the Disabled Student Services to let them know I needed a ride and that’s when they would say “sorry we have nobody that can take you up the hill at the moment.”
I was told that the workers from Disabled Student Services that have driven me up the hill all have been trained and must take a test in order to be able to drive the students to their desired location.
This is a great idea and I agree with that policy, however not enough workers have been trained.
That is where I feel that in order for a person to work in the disabled student services office they should be required to be trained and take the test to be able to use the transportation cart.
