On a sunny Tuesday morning, Laura Hall exits the third floor elevator in North Case Hall with a smile on her face. She is on her way to her English 302 class that begins at 10:20 a.m. She rolls her wheelchair up to a table in the small classroom of about 30 students.
She makes this trip two days a week and usually, depending on the weather, has little trouble making it to class. Sometimes, though, she has to overcome obstacles that go unnoticed by her peers, such as curbs and doors.
“It’s the little tiny things that are frustrating, like dropping a penny,” says Hall, an education junior who has spastic diplegia, a form of cerebral palsy.
On snowy days, Hall calls Spec-Tran, a bus system for people with disabilities, to pick her up. The Jackson native uses a wheelchair equipped with a joystick on the left armrest that allows her to stop when she lets go or speed up as fast as a jogger.
“I can drive fast enough, so it’s the speed that people run,” she said.
She also attends physical therapy sessions to increase agility and exercise her muscles. For easy access, her ID card rests in a pocket under the left armrest of her wheelchair.
In class, Hall said there usually is a table set up at which she can position her wheelchair. If not, she takes a portable plastic desk with her to use. If the building or classroom is not accessible for people with disabilities, she asks the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities, which she heard about from a high school counselor, for help.
She listens intently as a teaching assistant explains the relevance of linguistics and how to distinguish from noun phrases and predicates. She grips her pen in her left hand, being careful not to drop it on the floor.
Hall was born 12 weeks premature and weighed only 2.5 pounds, which caused a depravation of oxygen to her brain. She was diagnosed with spastic diplegia, which causes her to experience severe muscle stiffness or spasms, when she was 9 months old.
But when she was born, Hall’s family didn’t know how the disease would affect her.
“They didn’t know if I’d be able to talk or walk,” she says. “It was a wait-and-see kind of thing. My parents knew something wasn’t right. I have a cousin who’s the same age, and I wasn’t developing as fast as she was. I’m sure it was hard for them.
“They didn’t know a lot about what cerebral palsy was. They needed to educate themselves. We saw a lot of specialists and got in touch with people in the community.”
Campus accessibility
Although most campus buildings are accessible for people with disabilities, including West Holmes Hall, where Hall lives, students with disabilities have experienced problems in getting to class.
“Earlier this semester, there was an elevator broken and I couldn’t go to my class for a week,” says Hall, whose class was in Old Horticulture Building.
To solve her dilemma, Hall called the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities, and it contacted someone to fix the elevator - and the entire class of about 200 students relocated to Natural Resources Building for a month.
But most students with disabilities are aware of the obstacles they face when trying to enter or exit an older campus building. For example, Hall said some of the facilities in Wells Hall are not accessible for her.
“The bathroom is still a problem, even though it’s handicap accessible,” Hall says. “Or the way that a door swings - it’s little things like that.”
Greg Houghtaling, senior architect for engineering and architectural services in the Physical Plant, said MSU has created a universal design initiative to make all new buildings accessible for students with disabilities.
“We want to avoid any stairs or things like that where we would inadvertently be placing barriers to anyone, whether they are confined to a wheelchair, cane or crutches,” he said.
But Houghtaling said MSU’s historical architecture wasn’t designed to be accessible for people with disabilities.
“The bathroom facilities in old buildings are small, even for someone who isn’t confined to a wheelchair,” he said. “Sometimes we are faced with the choice of having to move a wall and take away space from another need, or eliminate toilets.”
Houghtaling said an accessible toilet takes up twice the room of a standard-size stall in a building. Some buildings received grants to renovate their facilities to make it easier for students with disabilities to navigate. IM Sports-Circle recently was given $500,000, Houghtaling said.
“It has an elevator, but it’s hard to get into because all the entrances have steps,” he said. “This new project is going to install a ramp with snow mounts and a new set of steps to chose which way to enter the building.
“The university has buildings that were built 100 years ago or more, so the university has set up a committee to fund accessibility projects on an ongoing basis.”
But Houghtaling said there are many factors that come into play when designing a building that’s accessible for people with disabilities.
“Housing did an assessment of all their facilities, and I think their plan is over the long term to renovate all of the housing facilities,” he said. “We as architects didn’t recognize the problem sooner. If people who designed buildings 50 or 100 years ago took more of an inclusive attitude about all people being able to have equal access, the university wouldn’t be stuck with the high cost of changing buildings.”
Still, Houghtaling said the work is worth it to make it easier for all students to get around campus.
“We have a very large campus, and it would take a lot to get all the buildings done,” he said. “The administration has taken the position that it’s important to us, and we should make all the buildings accessible to all of our students, and visitors as well.”
Officials at other universities continue to work to update old buildings, too.
Sam Goodin, director of services for students with disabilities in the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities at the University of Michigan, said the department often submits requests for greater access.
“Anything you substantially renovate has to be made accessible,” he said. “We have processes that exist where in an older building, if a person wants and needs a power door-opener, they can ask us to do that and we can get that done.
“As we have remodeled more and more buildings, we have come closer and closer to the codes.”
Fighting the good fight
Al Swain, associate director of the Capital Area Center for Independent Living in Lansing, has been an advocate for people with disabilities since he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 16. Multiple sclerosis is a disease affecting the central nervous system, which has symptoms ranging from the numbness of limbs to paralysis to vision loss.
Swain has fought for the rights of people with disabilities and for businesses and universities such as MSU to support the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
The components of the disabilities act are divided into five titles: reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities in the workplace, access to state and local government services and programs, access to public accommodations, the availability of a telecommunication access for deaf or hard-of-hearing people, and miscellaneous services.
“It’s addressed the issues that drinking fountains are too high if you are in a wheelchair, or public phones that need to be lowered if you are sitting in a wheelchair,” he said. “You encounter things like that which you might not think about if you are a person who is mobile or standing. We want to advocate for public accommodations to be user-friendly to everybody. That’s what you are getting with the ADA.”
Swain’s center’s purpose is to provide support for people with disabilities, offering living-skills training, peer counseling and information.
“There is a community out there, and everybody needs to be able to use that community,” he said. “Everybody should be able to go to the movie theater, the Rite Aid and get into the bowling alley. Everybody should be able to go to the mall.”
Going through the motions
Janet Hall said she thinks her daughter has progressed well, especially with exercising her independence in college.
“We were really worried about her going off to college, because she was dependent on us for getting dressed and whatnot,” she said. “But I thought it was probably my fault, because I helped her do things she could do. Going away to school, she was forced to do things herself. We are very proud of her. Her academics are excellent, and so is her personality. She has a lot of friends.
“It’s hard for me to watch her struggle to do something. Sometimes when she comes home on the weekend, I realize she can do things if we just let her. We pretty much take it one day at a time.
“We realized she was quite bright, just physically disabled - not mentally at all.”
Murray Goldstein, medical director for the United Cerebral Palsy Research and Educational Foundation in Washington, D.C., said cerebral palsy occurs in four ways: spastic diplegia, where both legs are affected; hemiplegia, which affects one side of the body; athetoid, which are uncontrolled movements of the body; and a mixture of all types.
Goldstein said spastic diplegia occurs in 70 percent of cases because of damage to the brain while the fetus is in the uterus, 20 percent during the birthing process and 10 percent in the first two years of life.
“Spastic diplegia means that there are spasms of the muscles of both the lower extremities,” he said. “It’s the most common form of cerebral palsy. It’s a disorder of the developing brain that affects the muscle control system of the body.”
But Goldstein said treatments are available that make the disease less painful.
“Spastic diplegia treatments are to decrease the spasticity of the affected muscles, strengthen the unaffected muscles, and physiotherapy (to) improve coordination.”
Although Hall is not required to take medication, she still faces obstacles throughout the day because of her cerebral palsy.
“Doors are something of a challenge, having to open the door with one hand,” she said. “If I drop something, it’s a challenge. My muscles are tight and spastic. I have very little balance, so I am unable to walk without a walker.
“There’s always times when I get frustrated, but normally, I don’t show that. Just little things on a daily basis. If I drop something little, I have to get out of my chair and get it up. When I brush my teeth, my right hand tightens up.”
In grade school, Hall was enrolled in regular classes and was involved in theater, yearbook and other organizations.
“I was friends with everybody,” she said. “The disability wasn’t an issue.”
But coming to MSU, Hall said she had doubts about how she would be able to navigate campus and operate on her own.
“I was nervous, because anytime you try something new, it’s a matter of adjustment,” she said. “It takes someone to get to know you to see there isn’t that much of a difference.”
Flexing her muscle
The buzz of a fan and classic rock songs from a radio are the only sounds in the background of the small room in Olin Health Center, which is filled with exercise equipment, trampolines and weights. Hall is lying on her back on a beige mat as her therapist holds her leg up toward the ceiling and bends her knee to stretch her hamstrings. The two discuss the weather, classes and Hall’s progress.
“I used my walker to go to dinner last night,” she says. “It’s good exercise. One of my friends used my chair and they had fun with that.”
Two days a week, Hall works with her physical therapist.
During the session, Hall explains how beneficial stretching her muscles is for her legs.
“I’m not able to relax like other people are,” she says.
Life at MSU
Although Hall faces small challenges throughout her day, she savors the activities she can participate in and reminds others that she can do things for herself.
“I like to go shopping or go to a movie or have Nintendo tournaments,” she says.
Around 11:30 a.m., she heads to lunch in Holmes, where she works at the front desk in the afternoon.
During her commute back home, Hall is careful to steer her wheelchair toward sidewalk curb cuts on the corners of streets, which were designed by Campus Park and Planning at MSU. When she arrives at Holmes, she uses sensors to open doors and takes an elevator to lunch.
While most students take a daily trip to the cafeteria for granted, balancing trays and maneuvering around serving lines is sometimes a chore for Hall.
“Soup is one of those things I don’t mess with,” she says, laughing. “I have to position the things on my tray a certain way. My friends are all cool about it.
“They used to wonder if I was right behind them in line, but now, they don’t wait for me. They just pull out a chair and save me a seat. Sometimes I have to take a few trips just to get everything.”
A few minutes later, Hall smiles and looks up from her tray.
“I dropped my fork,” she says as she heads back to the silverware area in the cafeteria. Later, it happens again.
“Normally, I don’t drop it twice,” she says with a smile.
Hall works at the Holmes front desk two days a week and alternative weekends. She said the only problem she experiences is not being able to reach high mailboxes.
“When people have a package on higher floors, the person before me has to put them lower so I can reach them,” she says. “Sometimes I take a little bit longer than other people to do things.”
During her shift, a student asks Hall for a package she received in the mail. She grabs the box, but drops it on the counter as she attempts to hand it to the student because her chair bumps into the front desk.
“Sorry,” she says.
“It’s OK,” the student responds.
Later in the day, she attempts to retrieve toilet paper rolls from a cabinet. She needs them for her single suite. But her wheelchair bumps into a floor fan. She rolls up and tries again, this time gathering the toilet paper on her lap.
But there are times when Hall’s easygoing manner is not embraced by strangers because they make judgments about her based on her disability.
“One time, I went back home to get my hair cut, and the woman talked to my friend and not to me,” she says. “But my friend let her know (I was able to speak for myself). A lot of times, people just don’t know how to act. I try to do the best I can.”
In the meantime, Hall enjoys her independence and wants to teach others acceptance toward people’s differences.
“I would point out the fact that if you think about all the diversity on campus, sticking out isn’t a big deal,” she says. “I think maybe I can teach kids things about diversity and how people are different. I have considered jobs where I work with disabled people.
“I hope people learn more about people with disabilities. By learning more about it, you see that I’m not that much different than anybody else.”
Camille Spencer can be reached at spenc105@msu.edu.
