Disabilities
continued from page 1
“I think her feeling was that she
had done so much accommodating,
she [felt] she was being taken ad
vantage of,” she said.
But Minchella, who has now
earned all his credits for gradua
tion, remains convinced the Uni
versity ignored his disability.
“We claim we’re so advanced in
mental illness and the treatment,”
he said. “But the actions of the peo
ple in this institution don’t reflect
that. They’re in the Stone Age.”
Finding further
accommodation
Molly Sirois, an assistant coun
selor with Disability Services, said
there are several methods to accom
modate students with disabilities,
especially during testing.
She said the most common re
course for students with learning
disabilities is to place them in a
separate classroom where they can
have more time and fewer distrac
tions to complete their tests.
Sirois said there are a variety of
measures for students with physi
cal disabilities. Blind students can
have class work translated into
Braille or tests can be scanned into
a computer and administered
through a synthetic speech pro
gram.
For those with who have prob
lems with their motor functions,
Sirois said they can answer test
questions verbally and have some
one write or type out their answers.
Bonnie Bennett, a student with a
slight disability that affects her abil
ity to write, said she does not feel
she’s at a disadvantage in her class
es.
“The test I take at the Disability
Office is the same test my class
mates have,” she said. “I use a type
writer to answer essay questions
rather than having to write them
out.”
While she said it would be nice
just to answer questions verbally,
Bennett also said she had no prob
lems expressing herself through the
arrangements with the Disability
Office.
Yet, Sirois said, for students with
severe learning disabilities, classes
become far more difficult.
“It’s more about maybe accessing
and retrieving the information
learned and actually expressing
that,” she said.
For these students and others
with severe physical impairments,
Sirois said there need to be testing
methods that are “not there yet in
education philosophy.”
“I’d like to see the way that we
really ask students to express their
knowledge change,” she said. “I
think we need to look to new ways
to ask students what they’ve
learned; it’s time we looked at that
in higher education as a whole.”
Education for the educators
Most professors said they simply
follow the recommendations of
Disability Services to accommodate
students with disabilities.
Religious studies professor and
department head Andrew Goble
said he is informed by Disability
Services when a student with spe
cial needs will be attending his
class and what that student will re
quire.
He said he appreciates the help
from Disability Services, because
with 200 to 300 students in some
classes, it would be hard to find
students who need some extra
help.
“We’re informed of it, because
it’s not up to us to look over the
class and see who’s deserving,” he
said.
But Gould said that teachers and
department heads need to be more
aware about how to deal with stu
dents with disabilities one-on-one.
She said when the situation with
Minchella arose, it was only
through extensive help from Dis
ability Services that she began to re
alize the process for working with a
dissatisfied student with disabili
ties.
“I had to find that out all the hard
way,” she said.
Gould said it wasn’t because she
and her staff couldn’t accommo
date people; she said she just
thought educators should be better
prepared to deal with any situation.
She said this likely could be facili
tated through an orientation period,
where staff members from Disabili
ty Services could explain the vari
ous types of disabilities and how
best to accommodate them.
“Traditional educators need to be
informed,” she said.
Senate passes annual sessions bill
By Brad Cain
The Associated Press
SALEM — A proposed ballot
measure asking voters if they want
the Oregon Legislature to meet in
annual sessions, rather than every
other year, won easy approval Mon
day in the Senate.
The measure cleared the Senate
on a 24-4 vote after supporters said
annual sessions would allow legis
lators to keep closer tabs on state
agencies and make it easier to draw
up a state budget.
Opponents of SJR12 said, howev
er, that annual sessions eventually
would lead to a full-time Legisla
ture of professional politicians.
If the measure clears the House,
it will be placed before voters in
May 2002. The measure would au
thorize the Legislature to meet each
January and limit to 150 the total
number of days lawmakers could
meet in a two-year period.
Oregon is one of only seven
states where lawmakers don’t meet
each year, and supporters of the
move to annual sessions said the
current every-other-year arrange
ment isn’t efficient in an age where
state government has grown to a
$12 billion operation.
Republican Sen. Randy Miller,
sponsor of the measure, said law
makers meeting annually would be
able to make sure state agencies
were carrying out the mandates im
posed on them by the Legislature.
Miller and other backers of annu
al sessions also argue that the cur
rent every-other-year approach
doesn’t work well with term limits,
where lawmakers are prohibited
from serving more than six years in
the House or eight in the Senate.
The measure was opposed by
Sen. Lenn Hannon, one of the Sen
ate’s longest-serving members, who
called it a “fraud” and said law
makers were trying to get around
the term limits law by having the
Legislature meet each year.
“If term limits is the issue, then
let’s vote on it,” the Ashland Re
publican said.
Further, Hannon said he doubts
Oregonians want “full-time politi
cians.
“We need a citizen legislature,
not a full-time, year-round legisla
ture,” Hannon said.
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