My name is Parker Legnon. I’ve been an ambulatory wheelchair user since around 2017, when I got my EDS diagnosis. I have a long history of barriers in the schooling system and uphill battles with accepting my need for my mobility aid. I’d like to share how I noticed these issues during my college experience.
My freshman year of college at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana started smoothly for a few weeks, with no access issues, but then we were hit with a massive hitch: two hurricanes back to back. The campus was evacuated, the damage was severe, and I ended up transferring colleges to avoid another “school at home” scenario. The sidewalks were ruined, and I knew it would be too much for me, so I left. As silly as it sounds, I yearned for the classroom, having been out of it since my sophomore year of high school. It felt like fate was trying to get in my way.
When I transferred to the new campus at the University of Southern Mississippi, for the next three years, I made a simple promise to myself: I would use my chair every day I needed it. So, I tried. In the first days on the new campus, I only used my chair. It exhausted me, even with the motor-assisted wheels, but I adjusted. However, I found myself choosing my chair less and less, opting to drive from parking lot to parking lot instead. I joked that the only good accommodation the campus gave me was the parking for my placard and a first-floor room.
Over the next two years, those words stuck in my mouth. I moved off campus to have my own space (and my own kitchen) and found it challenging to decide whether it would be me going to school or me and my chair. Every day, I’d ask myself how much I “needed” it, wondering if I could manage the day without it, blaming the exertion of putting my chair in and out of my car for the issue.
Eventually, I realized I had someone to help me with loading, making unloading more manageable. Even then, it seemed to signal something else. Why was it so hard to use my chair, specifically for school? Did it run deeper than just being perceived?
In hindsight, I refuse to think it was all in my head. I took a step back and realized I felt forced to navigate campus on my feet. It didn’t feel internalized; I’d worked too much to accept myself and my chair as an extension of me. It made more sense to accept an integral part of my well-being, but the thought, “It’s just a few classes in the same building, I have a car, it won’t be that bad,” got the best of me more often than I’m proud of. Every day that I went to school on foot, I knew I would return fatigued and in pain, things I knew I could avoid with my chair. So why?
After months of complaints and conversations, the conclusion finally came: at best, the campus gave me a lesson in patience; at worst, it compromised my safety and well-being. Even if I made responsible decisions for myself and used my chair, my main routes presented eye-opening issues.
It felt reasonable to assume that if I was having so much tension in my student life, other disabled students must be facing similar problems. The issues seemed small at first, but I noticed bigger and bigger problems over time.
First, I noticed third-party contractors parking in spots they had no clearance to, reported it, and moved on. Then, I noticed a lack of accessible parking spaces around certain buildings, but since almost every student struggled to find parking, I would move on. The real problem was the buildings. My favorite place to go, ironically enough, was only compliant with the Veterans Act, with no automatic button for the door and stairs down to the only bathroom available. The ramp onto the sidewalk was blocked by any car that parked in the accessible spot. The people there made it worth it, though not everyone was so pleasant.
I once had a campus officer issue me a parking violation with pictures of my car in a space submitted as evidence. My placard, bright as day, was visible in the photos. It felt like a special slap in the face. They had all of my information on record from when I purchased my parking pass and specified I was getting a disabled one. It felt like they were asking me to prove I was still disabled, to prove it at all.
This was my breaking point. I started complaining about everything I noticed. I developed a nose for sniffing out errors on campus. Anytime a button broke on my route, I would whine until it was fixed. With enough griping about my favorite yet inaccessible building, I found people would hold the heavy door more often, even if I was on my feet. Best of all, I found out the man who owned the foundation was working to get a new building made, one that had a ramp and buttons.
While this made me feel better for a very distant future, there was still the rest of the campus. There was the web of sidewalks between my main class building and every other building I hadn’t looked into myself. Students went to those classes every day. For years, I was going between one building and a few others, mostly to that coffee shop.
The first day I took my chair specifically to get coffee, I found something devastating: the sidewalk didn’t make a direct connection. Every day prior, I’d moved my car from one lot to another, walked if I was having a particularly high-energy day, through lots and streets.
To be clear, I could’ve taken a path about twice as long to wrap around buildings and stay on the sidewalks. I beg you not to judge me for choosing options that fit my schedule, ones that were convenient, if you can call detouring through a parking lot convenient.
The first time wasn’t bad. The texture of the asphalt against my wheels wasn’t as bad as spacey stone bricks. My chair didn’t rattle or make concerning sounds, and no vehicles turned down the access road as I made my way to see my friends. I made it safely, and I think it gave me the idea it was safe at all.
I wondered if something would happen some other time. I know a doubled path and less time with friends would’ve been smarter, but it wasn’t easy for me. I wheeled my own desire path through there about three or four times before it happened; the access road part of the parking lot got busy out of nowhere. It wasn’t as dramatic as it sounds, but logical emotion was lost on me. I just remember the rumble of the vehicle, a visual of “what if they hadn’t seen me, hadn’t stopped, I’m so low down” in my head, a truck the size of a tank doing a rolling stop while I frantically wheeled out of the way.
I stopped using my chair as often. My friend, whom I’ll call Coffee Guy, meant a lot to me. Coffee Guy would load my chair into my car if I asked him and offer even when I didn’t. He was one of the reasons I made it to class when I didn’t have the energy to learn. More often than not, I had the energy to chat with him. He asked a lot of friendly questions that helped me realize I was avoiding my chair.
He was one of the main people I talked to about everything, the first person I complained to when I found issues. Most of them I found trying to come talk to him. Now, I feel a lot of my college experiences revolved around how understanding people could be, but the layout of the school itself kept me from engaging with them.
It didn’t stop me, but I can only imagine everything I missed out on because the campus failed me. Everything I overlooked, and other students who encountered worse. If my favorite place being inaccessible wasn’t enough of a nail in the need for change, it was one of the dorms that gave me the most concern, something I would like to close on.
The dorm, to put it simply, had a handful of stairs to the elevators—at least five. As far as I’m aware, there wasn’t any other way to them, and I certainly was never shown one. I had friends who lived there that were kind enough to meet me elsewhere, but I never stopped thinking about it, and I still can’t stop.
An entire population of students continues to live there. Before my graduation, I heard of someone with a seeing-eye dog being assigned there, and they had to fight for a new dorm in a different building. That sort of negligence from accommodations offices surely rippled into everything else. If paperwork couldn’t secure your safety, what about the people still on a path to diagnosis? How many students there noticed what I did? How many experienced less? Experienced more? What could I do, just me, with a big mouth and a loud heart?
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the end of it all. I graduated, but my experience was soured by accessibility failures down to the last minute. The ramp up to the stage was so steep. When they offered faculty to push me up, I felt lucky to have someone I knew better to do the job instead. I know they said it was all they could do, but I didn’t want a stranger touching my chair in a moment I had defined for myself. I wanted so badly to symbolize my ability to carry a complete version of myself across the stage, a final moment to own my identity for what it was: a disabled graduate.
I know this is quite a lot, a bit disjointed, but tied up in the web of complaints is a simple wish. I believe that colleges should stop putting disabled students in corners, shoving us toward making compromises—whether it be one of safety, well-being, agency, or any sort of personal value that’s preferred untouched.
What was your experience like?
BIO
Parker Legnon is a budding writer with creative ambitions. They graduated highschool in 2020, successfully leaving a magnet academy with exceptional grades and academic awards in English writing. They then continued their education by pursuing a Bachelors of Arts, focusing this degree process on developing skills as a writer and researcher. While they specialize in creative fiction, a deep passion for advocacy has steered them towards touching on more and more topics of everyday reality and their firsthand experiences living disabled.
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