My Sixth Graduate Class at Hopkins

My sixth graduate class at Hopkins was one of the worst experiences I’ve had as a disabled student.

I’m a disabled graduate student at Johns Hopkins Engineering for Professionals (EP) working towards a masters in computer science. I’m writing these pieces to chronicle my ongoing problems receiving the disability accommodations Hopkins promises and the bullying and retaliation that happens when I fight to receive them.

To be clear — Hopkins agrees I should have classroom accommodations. They just don’t deliver.

I took Algorithms in the spring of 2019. Mark was still head of EP’s disability services, which he juggled with his work as facilities manager. (I never understood why a facilities manager with a degree in Communications was in charge of disability services for a program with 3,000 students.)

Algorithms is kind of a catch-all course explaining the basic algorithms and equations behind how computing and computational logic work.

Mark assured me that the professor, John Sadowsky, knew he needed to arrive 15 minutes before class began so I could show him how my streaming microphone worked. In live lectures my professors are supposed to wear a little lapel mic that streams into my hearing aids.

It’s easy-to-use. I control it from my hearing aids. All the professor has to do is wear it properly.

I arrived half an hour early and waited.

Sadowsky strode about a minute before class began. He was about to walk into the classroom, when I stopped him and reminded him about the streaming mic. He seemed frustrated, but he clipped it to his collar, walked in and started to lecture.

I sat down where my books were laid out and turned on my digital recorder. Sadowsky began his introduction to the course. He introduced himself, I don’t remember what else he said, though I have it on tape. Then he said:

“Recording this class is not allowed, except — unfortunately, for disability purposes.”

I don’t know whether he meant that it was unfortunate that someone was recording the class, or unfortunately that it was being done for disability purposes. The point is that I was the only student there with a digital recorder in front of them — it’s little light was blinking red. Sadowsky outed me as disabled to the entire class.

He was also wearing the streaming microphone wrong.

When humans speak, we make vowels in our throats, consonants with our tongues and lips. An odd facet of my hearing loss is that I have trouble with consonants — I don’t hear well in the mid-range, from middle C to a little over an octave above middle C. And that’s where consonants resonate.

Sadowsky is a little corpulent; he has a double-chin from his jawbone to his collar. He wore the microphone so it pressed against his throat. So it streamed the vowel sounds into my hearing aids, not the consonants.

The microphone is not supposed to press up against anything. Had Sadowsky come early, I would have told him that.

Adding to the problem, he was one of those professors who face away from the class while lecturing, so they can write on the board.

In lecture, I rely a lot on facial cues to understand what a person is saying. It’s sometimes called lip-reading, but it’s more like face-reading, with a little person-reading thrown in. I can’t do it if someone is facing away from me.

So I ended up missing most of the first lecture.

During the first lecture, I emailed Mark explaining the problems: Sadowsky hadn’t come early, he wasn’t wearing my streaming mic properly, and he wasn’t facing forward. I don’t know if having the professor face forward was one of my disability accommodations before that first class — I believe it was — but if it wasn’t, Mark added it immediately. Facing someone who is hard-of-hearing when they speak is considered a reasonable accommodations in most situations.

I figured Mark, or someone would speak with Sadowsky, and he’d begin facing forward.

There’s one thing EP does well — I’ve found that if I need a disability accommodation, they usually have no problem adding it to my list.

That first lecture I was also concerned for the health of my little streaming mic. It’s an expensive piece of equipment — and it’s mine. I paid for it. Sadowsky was unshaven, and let’s be clear, he smelled like an unwashed mathematician. I was afraid I’d have to clean short beard-hairs and sweat out of the microphone.

The second class Sadowsky came early, and I showed him how to use the streaming mic. I explained that I controlled it via my hearing aids — all he had to do was wear it properly. I brought a lanyard, and we experimented with how far down the lanyard he should wear it. He showed what appeared to be genuine concern with finding the right distance, so I settled on one for him. In reality, any place within about seven inches of the collarbone is fine, as long as it doesn’t press against a person’s neck.

I asked him about facing forward when he lectured. He said, no. That wasn’t a reasonable accommodation, and he didn’t have to do it.

So began a little dance with Professor Sadowsky. He’d tell me before every class that I had no right to ask him to face forward. I’d explain that the ADA was the law, and the request was coming from his employer, not me.

But he was clever. Instead of complaining to his employers that he didn’t like his directive, he came after me, the person it was for. Before every class, I’d hear a lecture on how my request was unreasonable, so he was under no obligation to follow it.

I looked Sadowsky up on the EP’s website. He’s taught for the Hopkins since 1981. He knows what he can get away with.

Sadowsky’s actions indicate Hopkins doesn’t really take disability accommodations seriously. To me and to the American legal code, they’re Federal law, a realization of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1974 Rehabilitation Act. To Hopkins EP, they’re a courtesy the school extends, but students are impolite to complain if the school doesn’t always extend this courtesy.

Dr. Chlan’s attitude toward the situation sums it up. A few weeks in, I complained to her in an email, and she said the problem was that I wasn’t proactive enough in bringing the situation to her administration’s attention. I replied that I’d emailed Mark on break during the first lecture. She responded via email that the real problem was that I was “pushy.”

I believe that, deep down, that’s EP’s view of disabled students who need classroom accommodations. The problem is us. Either we’re not proactive enough, or we’re too pushy.

Sadowsky wasn’t professional in other ways, but these impacted the class as a whole.

He didn’t run our programs. He’d ask for the code and the results, but never check to see if they actually ran. I figured this for laziness on his part. There were a few rather hard assignments at the beginning, but mostly he structured the class so it would be light on grading. I don’t think he wanted to do much work.

This hurt me from the standpoint of learning because, if you didn’t learn the material from lecture, all that was left was the readings and the assignments. But the assignments were pretty sparse. So that left the reading — because I couldn’t get a great deal out of the lectures because I couldn’t see his face.

He also liked to talk about his work as an actor. Sadowsky fancied himself a Shakespearian character, sort of a Fallstaff. He spent a great deal of time talking about how much he loved the theater, how it was his true calling, not math.

The problem was these digressions had nothing to do with the topic of algorithms.

I learned more about his acting than many of the theorems he explained because when he talked about acting, he would face forward.

Let’s be clear. Graduate classes at Hopkins cost $4,500 each. We aren’t paying $4,500 to listen to some guy talk about how much he’d rather be on a real stage doing Shakespeare instead of teaching us computer logic and math.

Dr. Chlan finally moved the class into an upstairs room where Sadowsky could use an electronic whiteboard that would allow him to face forward while he lectured.

He didn’t use it.

He’d use it for the first few minutes of class, then revert back to the regular whiteboard.

I tried hiding all his markers. He just went to the office and got more markers.

I asked the office if they would hide their markers.

I figured that, at this point, EP knew Sadowsky had no intention of facing forward, and there was nothing I could do. I decided to try to live with it. He was wearing the streaming microphone. Maybe that would be enough.

It wasn’t I began to fall behind. Even though I was in class, I wasn’t really getting the lectures. I can’t lip-read through the back of a person’s head.

I made an A on the first major project, but bombed the mid-term.

Finally I complained to the Office of Institutional Equity, Hopkins’ internal Civil Rights watchdog. I spoke in person to a young lawyer named Tracy. The situation concerned her; a professor was directly disobeying a disability accommodations order. She said she’s contact him and order him to face forward when he lectured.

The evening after she contacted him, he refused to face forward during lecture.

Desperate, I contacted Dr. Chlan again. She was genuinely surprised Dr. Sadowsky had assured her he was facing forward when he lectured.

I was stunned. The professor who deliberately disobeyed the department for the entire semester so far had reported that everything was fine, and the department believed him; they didn’t bother checking with the student who was affected to see if everything was fine.

Listening to the professor, not the student, is an ongoing theme at EP. If there’s a problem with my disability accommodations, and the professor reports that the problem has been solved, EP will believe the professor.

They won’t ask me.

I guess Dr. Chlan tore Dr. Sadowsky a new one, because the following class, he began to face forward.

This was the eight class of the semester. I’d already missed most of the first seven lectures. So even though I’d attended a study group and worked hard, I was behind.

Hopkins EP didn’t offer me any help in catching up. Sadowsky was facing forward now — that appeared to satisfy them.

A few classes later, Sadowsky started to tap on my streaming microphone. Tap… tap.

This caused very loud sounds to stream right into my hearing aids.

I have normal hearing below middle C. My streaming mic is sophisticated, but not sophisticated enough to filter out loud sounds that shouldn’t be there in the first place. These sounds hurt my ears.

Tap.

It hurt my ears so much, I had to take out my hearing aids.

My hearing aids feel like part of me. Being forced to take them out feels like a physical violation. I pulled Sadowsky aside during break and asked him not to do this. He objected, saying he had to do this to adjust the microphone.

As I wrote above, I control my streaming mic from my hearing aids. It’s a blue tooth device. All the lecturer has to do is wear it properly.

For the last three classes, Sadowsky tapped my microphone every class. We fell into a familiar pattern. I would ask him before class and during break not to tap my streaming mic, and he was claim he had to do so to adjust it. Then in class he’d tap the microphone, and I’d take out my hearing aids in pain. The situation made it hard to be in lecture and follow what was going on.

Let’s be clear, this was bullying. The tapping was bullying. Explaining that he had to do it, that was bullying, too.

After bombing the exam, I wanted to do a good job on the final assignment.

Several students wanted extensions. I was one of them. During the final class, he talked to us, and said we could have until — I believe he said the fifteenth. He didn’t give us a written date.

I went home and went to work. I didn’t check my email. I didn’t want to read any more emails from Hopkins. In particular, I didn’t want to see any emails from him. That’s the best strategy for bullies — cut off communication as soon as you can.

He did email me — I believe on Saturday — saying he needed the assignment soon, without giving a date. I didn’t see it till several days later because I wasn’t reading my emails.

I believe I turned it in on the following Tuesday. I was happy with it, fairly sure of an A.

So I was surprised when I received a C for the course.

I complained, sure that the department would see it my way. He’d never given us a date in writing, and he’d been bullying me for the last three classes. Because of the bullying, I hadn’t asked him for clarification. I simply wanted to turn my work in and never see the man gain.

One of my accommodations is that everything important needs to be in writing. With spoken English, I have trouble telling the thirteenth, from the fifteenth, from the sixteenth. And he’d never written down a due date.

The department didn’t see it my way. Dr. Chlan says she tried to reach out to him, but he wouldn’t respond. I don’t know what to think about that. She continued to be the head of the Division, and I believe he continues to teach at the school. He must communicate with them sometimes.

A few weeks into the summer, I received a notice from my dean. Because I had received a C in Algorithms, I was now on academic probation. If I received another C, I’d have to leave the program.