“I’m saddened to believe that something that was supposed to be a memorial gift from the community and provide access for physically disabled medical students has been displaced and sold to the public,” said Joe Ortiz, Tarala’s former classmate.

Ortiz has contacted local media in hopes of finding the displaced table, which still had a memorial plaque on it with Tarala’s picture, he said. He’s hoping someone on campus bought the table, which has emotional significance, and will return it, he said.

“It’s not about how much the table cost or about replacing it,” Ortiz said. “It’s the sentimental value.”

Although the memorial table hasn’t been found, many other on-campus accommodations are used by some students with disabilities, like Staci Renkema.

Deciding whether to mark A, B or C was not Renkema’s only thought when she was filling in the bubbles of her Scantron sheet during an exam: Dexterity and pain in her wrists and hands also weighed on her mind. Renkema, an animal science junior, was diagnosed with the connective tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome in December of 2006 and fibromyalgia last May. The disorders cause her joints to dislocate easily and lead to chronic pain, easy bruising and heart and stomach problems.

The accommodations and accessibility she receives on campus are an essential part of her — and many other students with disabilities — academic and social life.

Assistive technology that accommodates students with disabilities can be found throughout campus in the form of screen enlargement, voice and Braille output, and adjustable computer workstations, which can be found in all the computer labs on campus.

When her classes started, Renkema said she talked to her professors about the Verified Individualized Services and Accommodations, or VISA, she received from the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities, or RCPD. VISA provides the documentation necessary for students to communicate their accommodation needs to faculty members.

Since she can’t sit or stand for too long, Renkema said she receives extended time to take exams in a separate room. She also has permission to type her answers on a computer or use a scribe because she has difficulty writing and sometimes gets to make up classwork if she has been absent.

“There are some days, with my condition, when I physically can’t get out of bed to go to class,” Renkema said.

But the accommodations don’t apply to every class. Weight restrictions on how much she can lift wouldn’t be relevant in a math class but could apply to one of her animal science classes, she said.

To receive accommodations, students are responsible for reporting their disabilities to RCPD, said Virginia Martz, blindness/visual impairment and mobility disabilities specialist for the resource center.

RCPD coordinates classroom adaptations and housing accommodations, and provides accessible textbooks, assistive technology and note-taking assistance to students with a documented need.

Brooke Ketchum said she typically seeks assistance from the RCPD when she has a question about a building’s accessibility or when she’s reporting snow-covered sidewalks in the winter.

A car accident when she was five years old left her in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down.

Ketchum, an animal science and kinesiology senior, said professors have given their assistance whenever it was needed — from making sure there’s a table in the room for her to sit at to adjusting things to her lower eye level.

When pushing herself up in her seat to see inside the cadaver, her kinesiology class realized she wasn’t going to be able to see it, so her professor allowed her to move around the room to get the best view, she said.

Ketchum said she planned to be a veterinarian, since she grew up riding and showing the horses her family boarded. But during her junior year of high school, she said she was inspired to pursue a career in neurosurgery or sports medicine.

Having a wheelchair is not going to stop that, she said.

“I’m used to it,” Ketchum said. “This is all I know; I don’t really remember walking.”