My fifth graduate class at Hopkins was also Data Structures. This time I passed. That’s not to say the professor provided the disability accommodations Hopkins promised. She didn’t. Nor did the school stepped in and make her provide the accommodations. Rather, I’d attempted the course enough times that I was now familiar with the material and able to get through.

I’m a disabled graduated student in Johns Hopkins Engineering for Professionals (EP). They don’t do a good job of fulfilling their promises of classroom accommodations. Some of the screw-ups are funny, others less so. Some of the professors feel they can bully disabled students; most have, at best, a lackadaisical approach toward classroom accommodations. So far, I have yet to see any indications the EP administrations gives a damn.

This course was taught by Geetha Rajasekaran, who asked us to call her Geetha. She cared about the subject and it interested her. As a teacher, I generally rate her highly.

But she wasn’t terribly interested in implementing the classroom accommodations Hopkins mandated for me. She sometimes wouldn’t put on the streaming microphone until five-to-fifteen minutes after the lecture began. She’d then take it off during breaks, and forget to put it back on. I’d try to gesture to her, but I often ended up missing part of the first and a second halves of the class.

I complained to Mark, the EP disability coordinator. I believed he spoke with her. Nothing changed.

She also liked splitting the class into group discussions. Group work can be great, but it wasn’t for me in this class. Students would talk over each other to the point where there was a fair amount of background noise. I have hearing loss, and even small amounts of background noise make it nearly impossible for me to understand human speech. I’m good at lipreading, but in a group with a lot of people talking at once, using new terminology, acronyms, and equations with variables, lipreading isn’t enough for me.

I mentioned to Mark early on that this was a problem and asked him to ask Geetha to ask the class to keep it down during class discussions.

There was one really smart young woman who was a mathematician in the group I was usually in. I really wanted to hear what she had to say, work with her. But I remember asking her to repeat over and over. When you ask a person with normal hearing to repeat, they usually assume you didn’t understand the concept, not the words themselves. I remember her looking at me with a mix of pity and exasperation when I simply didn’t understand what she was saying.

Geetha would not effectively tell the class to keep it down.

This went on for about half the semester. About a quarter of every class was spent in group discussion working on problems. Because of the background noise, this time was useless for me.

Finally I stood up in front of the class and explained I had a hearing problem. That, with background noise, I was effectively deaf. Could everyone keep it down during group discussion, and only speak one at a time?

To my amazement, everyone did. The students were more willing to be adult and do the right thing than the professor.

Around the same time I told Geetha over email that, if she didn’t wear the streaming microphone whenever she lectured, I would scare up my old journalism contacts and write about how she was breaking Federal law by disobeying the Americans with Disabilities Act.

This was a fairly toothless threat. I was a book reviewer. I don’t know the sorts of editors who can ok investigative journalism. And besides, magazines and newspapers don’t seem interested in writing about how colleges and universities are failing disabled students. The problem isn’t on their radar.

But Geetha didn’t know this. And my bluff worked. From that moment on, she began wearing the streaming mic whenever she lectured.

There was one lecture she recorded. Geetha knew she was supposed to submit it for transcription, but didn’t. I asked her several times. The lecture pertained to one of our major assignments. But she just wouldn’t submit it to the school.

Finally, she submitted it. The transcription was available the day after the assignment was due.

Fortunately I was able to negotiate an extension on the assignment.

Bad things happened during the midterm and the final, too. I don’t remember which was which, but for one exam someone kept calling in on the room’s conference calling speaker.

For my in-person classes at APL, I took my tests in empty classrooms, usually upstairs. Sometimes in the Optics Lab, but occasionally in a plain classroom. The classrooms are outfitted with conference calling equipment.

During one of my Data Structures exams, a woman kept calling in from San Francisco. I had trouble understanding her — conference call speakers are difficult for me to understand. But she was adamant that she had an important call-in meeting in that very room. Each time she called, I explained that no, there was no meeting. I was trying to take an exam. Please, don’t call back.

But she’d call back. This happened, I believe, five times. Her meeting was very important, she assured me, and maybe it was. But I wasn’t able to walk around APL looking for the meeting she was supposed to call in for. For one thing, as I student I only had access to two floors in a public area. Likely her meeting was in one of the areas you needed a badge to access. And I had an exam to take.

I looked at the conference call speaker — I was pretty sure I could dismantle it, but it wasn’t my equipment. Finally I went to the office, had them speak to the women on the conference speaker. Then at my request, they unhooked the speaker so she couldn’t dial in again.

No, I didn’t get extra time on my exam for the time I spent dealing with the woman in San Francisco. Nor was there any consideration that the reason I take exams in a private room is that I don’t recover well from interruptions.

The worst was the other exam, one of two times I’ve been physically frightened as a student at APL.

I was sitting in the same room, taking my exam when a group of engineers came in. I believe they were engineers there for a conference. They held beverages and plates. They told me I had to leave.

No, I’m here taking an exam.

No, we’ve reserved the room. You have to leave.

No.

But we have the room.

There were three of them. The were bigger than I was and were standing over me, laughing. I realized they had probably been drinking. It was around seven in the evening. Not a lot of people were were around. By the way they were leaning over me, I though they might grab me. College was a long time ago, but I’ve been to enough drunken parties to know the stance of men about to manhandle a woman.

No, you have to leave. I stood up.

They got in my face a bit — We have important things to discuss.

No. I’m taking an exam.

They laughed and looked at each other. Then slowly, laughing, they walked out.

Shaken, I started to try to concentrate on my exam again. About ten minutes later, they came back.

You really have to give us the room. They stood in the doorway, but didn’t come in. I don’t think I stood up this time. I sat and looked at them. Finally they left.

I don’t believe I did particularly well on the exam. But Hopkins doesn’t give you a second chance, or any sort of leeway on an exam when a group of drunken men try to throw you out of the exam room. I’ve told many administrators this story. No one has ever expressed concern.

For two years I dealt with people coming into my exam room at APL. And for two years I begged my department to provide me with a proctor to protect me and field weirdos wandering in.

One good thing Student Disability Services did was examine the situation and decide to provide me with an exam proctor. I was at the point where I was shopping around for an off-duty police officer to bring with me to my exams to keep people out of the room. Hopkins EP told me officially that I couldn’t do that, but I figured with all the random people wandering around APL, no one would notice.

But then they did come through. I don’t know whether to be glad they came through, or upset that they had so little consideration for my situation that it took Hopkins two years to do anything — even though I complained to everyone I could find to complain to.

The good news is that despite a teacher who often didn’t provide classroom accommodations, a woman in San Francisco, and a group of drunken engineers, I passed the class.