Brooke Hopwood is a third-year environmental management and protection major at Cal Poly and an opinion columnist at Mustang News. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Mustang Media Group.
You have debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorder. Not the funny, Facebook-meme, cleaning-and-organizing your bedroom “OCD.” The real OCD. The ugly OCD.
You’re in an OCD flare. Before you’re even conscious, you’re already ruminating about whatever you were before you fell asleep. Right now, it’s brain fog.
“Do I have long COVID?” “Am I getting early-onset dementia?” “What if the rumination is making it worse?”
You’re stuck for hours. The sharp, white-hot feeling of panic is in your chest for almost half the day. You can’t eat because you’ve convinced yourself eating fuels the panic.
You avoid hanging out with your friends because, “what if I have a panic attack again?” “What if everyone’s sick of me constantly panicking?” You can’t sleep for more than four hours at a time, and when you do, you have nightmares about the “brain fog problem.” “What if I don’t exist?”
You still catch glimpses of the life you love: San Luis Obispo (paradise), your friends, your classes and your family. But during a flare, OCD consumes nearly every moment.
I’ve done my best to paint a picture of my disability. Not every day is a waking nightmare — I’m sensitive about proving its legitimacy, a product of having an “invisible illness.”
To be honest, I don’t really think about myself as someone with a disability. Most days, I just think of myself as Brooke.
I’m a hardworking student — I take detailed notes, I pay attention in class, I sit in the front so I’m not tempted to get on my computer and I rarely use AI.
As a student with OCD, I’m extremely grateful for the Disability Resource Center (DRC). When going to class feels nearly impossible, I thank God for excused absences, late arrival and early departure.
When I can’t focus on a midterm because my ear started ringing and I can’t stop trying to figure out if it’s a medical problem or not– true story– I think about the accommodations I email to my professors at the start of the semester: “1.5x extension time for assessments, distraction-reduced small group.”
During a bad flare, about 80% of my attention goes to whatever I’m obsessing about. It’s a huge relief that whatever I can do with the 20% is rewarded, and the 80% isn’t penalized.
In theory that is. In reality, not all professors adhere to DRC accommodations, and in my experience, not much can be done about it.
My worst experience so far was in the fall quarter of my sophomore year. For a variety of disability-related reasons, I was 15 minutes late to a lab at the Poly Canyon Loop Trail. My professor had given us a number to text if we were going to be late.
I asked if I could still make it to the lab, as my apartment in Cerro Vista was only about a 10-minute walk from the meeting spot. I cited my “late arrival” DRC accommodation, but assured him that I didn’t anticipate needing to use it often.
Almost immediately, I got a text back. “No, late arrival won’t work for this class’s lab. Maybe find another class if this will be frequent,” the professor said.
I was dumbstruck. Nearly all of my professors had been understanding in the past. I could have used my own transportation to catch up, and he didn’t even know what my disability was. For all he knew, I had a broken leg.
I already felt bad for being late, and I didn’t want any kind of confrontation, so I went home and looked for other classes. At this point, there were two days left in the add/drop period, but I genuinely didn’t think I could put up with a professor not accommodating my accommodations.
The problem being, as every Cal Poly student knows, there was literally nothing left. I couldn’t drop the course because I would lose my loans and scholarships. Unfortunately, I was stuck with this guy.
I decided to email him, CC’ing my DRC lead specialist, the representative for my case. I explained that I’ve been able to keep up with past labs even with the occasional late start and “when I’m late, it’s disability-related, not for a lack of interest or effort.”
I patted myself on the back, feeling like a diplomat and a scholar. After his response, however, my self-confidence was shot. Without airing too much of our personal correspondence, within 10 back-and-forth emails, I got this line:
“Since when is arriving late to a required lab that uses shared transportation a disability?”
That statement was particularly harsh, and frankly, it’s the only one that stuck with me out of the chain of emails. In my responses, I tried to explain that my disability hasn’t been a problem in other classes, that I’m adaptable and that the accommodations align with the ADA portion of his syllabus.
Most importantly, I tried to correct him — “tardiness isn’t a disability, my disability causes tardiness,” I said. He wouldn’t budge.
Again, I’m grateful for the DRC, but they didn’t offer much help. As the email exchange was taking place, I joined a Zoom call with my lead specialist to come up with solutions.
Apparently, my professor had emailed her separately and it made her so uncomfortable that she didn’t respond. She told me that several students had dropped the class in the past because the professor wasn’t accommodating. She offered to meet with the department head with me, but the professor was high up in the department, and I was scared to rock the boat.
I felt alone in the whole process, and I wish my DRC representative would’ve gone to bat for me.
I wish she’d done more than send him links to the attendance policies and avoid his scary emails. I wish I hadn’t felt so intimidated and helpless as a student trying to stand up for myself against a professor with infinitely more bargaining power than me.
To make a long story short, I received a zero on the first lab. I got an “A” in the course though — up yours, Professor X! I didn’t use the accommodation for the rest of the quarter because I was so scared of having another issue.
Therefore, the issue never really got solved. His stance was essentially that in the workplace, tardiness would not be accepted, so he was rejecting my accommodation. My stance was that it was school and state policy, and I could be adaptable if needed.
Why was I caught in the crossfire? There’s a greater societal conversation about disability resources happening and a consensus hasn’t yet been reached.
The COVID-19 lockdown brought an air of understanding and accommodation in the workplace. Now that we’re back to work, has that continued? Do we still have a culture of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” and “getting what’s yours because no one’s gonna give it to you?” If we decide, as a culture, that it’s okay to meet people where they’re at, what would that mean for our workforce?
Personally, I can see how accommodations might make things harder in the long run. I didn’t necessarily disagree with my professor’s viewpoint. I just wish he hadn’t approached it in a way that made me cry about losing scholarships and being seen as a lazy, tardy, bad student.
My future employers might even air the same grievances as my professor. But, as the incoming generation of employees, managers and business owners, don’t we have a say in how the workforce is run? We have to start now if we ever expect this apathetic attitude to change.
Regardless, the DRC doesn’t need to answer these questions, nor does my professor. To practically solve the issue, the DRC needs to set stronger boundaries and provide more information to instructors.
If excused absences are excused no matter what, professors need to change their attendance policies. If professors’ attendance policies need to stay the same, students should be aware of the limitations of DRC assistance.
If professors don’t follow the DRC agreements, despite what they might have listed on their syllabi, there needs to be accountability.
There should be a form to fill out or a formal meeting process to request. The Cal Poly registration platform should include DRC capabilities in each course description panel on Schedule Builder.
I work hard both in and out of school to live a normal life, but sometimes, I just can’t do it. On those days, I would love to know that my school will be compassionate and advocate for me when my accommodations aren’t met.
But as it stands, the Disability Resource Center isn’t fully equipped to deal with professor pushback against accommodations that students need and are legally entitled to. How can students be expected to cope with being caught in the crossfire?