A Conversation With Disability and Academic Support Representatives

It’s that time of year again: student elections. A few might spend time campaigning for their friends, but most people scroll through candidates, skim their bios, click submit and never think of it again. Think about it… Do you know who to go to if you’re struggling with a style of teaching or facing discrimination from a tutor? You might not realise it, but over twenty Disability and Academic Support Representatives work behind the scenes and serve as contacts for students in need. They also consider module feedback and attend Student Staff Consultative Committees (SSCCs) to improve your academic experience, but, as one representative explained, in “a very historical institution that doesn't really want to change,” making those improvements is a lot easier said than done.

For starters, it can be difficult to get around the University of St Andrews if you have a physical disability due to the prevalence of older, pre-building code academic buildings. This is particularly true for Psychology and Neuroscience students, said Lauren Hay, the School’s Disability Representative. Despite an elevator, many areas are only accessible via steps, and heavy doors make navigation difficult if you have mobility issues. “Every time that we have Visiting Days, people come and see the University and realise they actually can't physically access this building that would be the centre of their education,” Hay explained. “Those people then feel like they don’t fit in here and feel that the University doesn’t expect them to, because they’re not doing anything to change.” 

Siobhan Henderson, Disability Representative for the School of Biology, brought up another accessibility issue: the distance between teaching spaces. The School of Biology is located fifteen minutes out from the town centre in the Biomedical Sciences building. This becomes an accessibility issue when “you're expected to get from the North Haugh to town in zero minutes, because they're back-to-back lectures,” Henderson explained.

The lack of a central space has made Henderson’s job a lot more difficult than expected. Student representatives rely on feedback from students. With no place to put up notices, Henderson has had trouble attacking issues head-on because she has little insight into what they actually are. She isn’t sure that students even know there is a Disability Rep they can reach out to.“I’ve not gotten that far [in my work] because there’s been almost no feedback,” Henderson said. Student representatives make improvements by presenting student feedback to staff at SSCCs, where their suggestions for change are accepted, workshopped, or rejected by the rest of their School. To propose change, they need evidence that it’s necessary; otherwise, nothing happens. That’s why some representatives, Henderson included, aren’t happy with the new Pulse surveys.

Pulse Module Surveys, a new style of survey introduced to students this past February, have changed the module feedback process by shifting responsibilities from student representatives to staff. Module feedback used to go directly to student representatives, who would sift through comments, decide which were relevant, and then present their findings to staff. This meant that representatives already had evidence organised and action plans ready to go in time for SSCCS. Now, however, only staff are able to view written module feedback. Representatives just get the quantitative data, which makes it “really difficult to make a case for anything when you’ve just got ten responses rating how accessible the School is on a ranked scale,” Hay said. Henderson put it more bluntly. “The Pulse survey is kind of useless.” Now that staff get the raw comments, some lecturers will take complaints badly even if they’re not really relevant, Hay explained. Previously, student reps would have taken any unfounded insults or personal jabs out.

Taking feedback too personally is another problem Hay has encountered with teaching staff. A few staff members “say no to literally everything that comes out of my mouth,” Hay said. A vocal few, combined with a general lack of momentum, have made her feel like she’s spending her time on a pointless project. “I’m not sure I’m going to run again [for disability representative],” Hay said. “It feels like you’re constantly having to wear away at the same problems.” Though she believes that many staff members do put the effort in, they’re not really sure how to apply changes, and she’s not in a position that gives her the power to apply them herself. On the other hand, some staff seem “really afraid” to get disability-related feedback and tend to go on the defensive as soon as they hear complaints. In Hay’s mind, feedback is a good thing — it’s how improvements are made. However, this defensiveness makes it “intimidating” to stand in front of a group of academics “at the top of their fields” and tell them what they could do differently.

Lucy, an Arts student and Disability Representative who preferred to use a pseudonym for fear of social repercussions within her school, agreed that “the big faculty meetings can be hostile environments” for student representatives. After one particularly heated meeting, she received over a dozen emails from staff apologising for how a senior administrator had spoken to her. That kind of tension has made her hesitant to attend office hours or seek academic support from staff she’s worked with on disability issues. “The relationship between being a student and then also being an active member within the department can be quite scary — it takes guts.” 

Illustration by Lauren McAndrew