As I'm writing this, it is 11:28 p.m. on a Friday night. Miller Hall is quiet. I've already seen my friends off to their various social engagements, and anyone else who might be left behind is silently studying. But I have not made the choice to stay in this weekend for responsible reasons like catching up on schoolwork and sleep; it's just that the social scene, and really the whole campus of Tufts, is just not friendly to someone on crutches. It's something you don't really think about until you are "temporarily handicapped" (which I actually think is a bit of an overstatement — people seem to forget that I still have the use of my arms). Once you are handicapped, suddenly everything becomes an obstacle: the two flights of stairs you have to walk up to get to your friend's room, the distance between fridge and bed. That's really what it boils down to. Trying to go to a frat just seems foolish.
I could sit here and list off all the reasons why it's no fun to have a broken leg, but they're not all as obvious as you might think. I don't blame Tufts' founders for building the campus on a hill — there's a great view. Really, it's the other things that don't immediately come to mind when you think about life on crutches that are even worse — how you don't have the ability to carry food back for yourself in the dining hall or even carry an umbrella. But it's not even my lack of independence that I take issue with.
More than a test of physical endurance or character, this ordeal has been a lesson in bureaucracy. To invoke the Americans with Disabilities Act, I do have the right to hold administrators accountable for assuring me the equal opportunity to an education. A few days after I had surgery to reset my leg, I made phone calls to notify the university about why I would be missing the first two weeks of the semester. Please note the pluralization of the word "call." My parents and I spent hours on the phone during my two−week−long recovery to make the necessary arrangements so that I could complete my second semester of freshman year. I have about seven 617−627 numbers in my contacts ... which is a little puzzling, seeing as Tufts actually has someone named as a director of disability services, Sandra Baer. But I learned that our disability services coordinator doesn't really coordinate for people like me. She delegates more, because she can't get you the key to the handicapped bathroom, or a MicroFridge so you can store ice for swelling at the incision site, or a parking pass so you can don't have to crutch down hills to your classes.
Now, I'm pretty sure that I'm not the first student to have broken a leg at Tufts, and I feel as though disability services should be a little more able to take care of my needs instead of giving me three other people to call or suggesting that I ask yet another friend to "do it for me" in response to my every question. Tufts isn't a huge university — in fact, the reason I chose to attend school here is so that I would not feel like a number. But this whole process makes me feel the opposite, more like a burden upon this system.
Tufts' philosophy is so grounded in the embracing of diversity and providing equal access to an education that it's surprising that we don't have a person who can successfully make this transition easier for me — or for that matter, even handicapped entrances to our dorms. All of this trouble I've had to go through makes that equal−access clause seem like merely an afterthought.
--
Melissa Roberts is freshman who has not yet declared a major.
