Sometimes when we run into obstacles, it's hard to tell if the problem is our disability, our ethnicity or just everyday bureaucratic roadblocks. Sometimes it may be a combination of all of these factors. In my fight to get back to work, the hard part has been figuring out where the real problem is. Once we know where to direct our energies, we can start making progress in opening doors.

I enrolled in Social Security's Ticket to Work program a year ago. A vocational rehabilitation counselor worked out a good program for me, in which I would take classes at a State University to get the skills I needed. My disabilities make attending classes on campus very difficult, so I enrolled in the online program. It's an approved Bachelor of Arts program that duplicates everything offered in the classroom and it has stringent protections of academic integrity.

Interaction between prejudice and paranoia!
I had a hard time getting into the University. My enrollment packets kept getting lost. I started getting paranoid after my third packet went missing. The University kept insisting they had never seen them, but my Vocational Rehabilitation counselor had fax receipts for the last two. I've had people tell me that they've heard on television that illegal immigrants get everything given to them, including free college education, and that makes them angry. In some people's minds, I suspect that translates to every Latino or bilingual person. I began to wonder if sabotage was at work. After I missed the first semester enrollment deadline, I appealed for help to the Minority Coordinator and the Disability Coordinator of the University. The Disability Coordinator never responded, but the Minority Coordinator, Lee Bostic, was great. He pulled everyone together at the University and together they solved the problem. It turned out the University had received my paperwork, but an untrained staff person had misfiled the packets. I still don't know why this didn't happen to other students with disabilities, but the important thing was I finally got to start school.

New obstacle introduced
I've been studying a year now, and maintaining a 4.0 average. I have a job offer after graduation. But the real fight is only now beginning. Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, the State agency that provides funding for higher education, had awarded me a grant to study. Half way into the year, I learned they retracted it.

Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, or PHEAA, (pronounced fea) as everyone calls the State grant agency, said that I didn't qualify for a grant because I was studying online. State regulation requires that a PHEAA funded student spend at least 50% of their time in classroom. I understand that some online college programs may be questionable, but mine was a State school, and an approved State program. The program I am taking is the same as the one on campus being funded by PHEAA. The only difference is that I am accessing it from my home. These online programs were developed so that people like me, who before never would have been able to get higher education, could participate equally. It seemed odd to me that a program would be made available for disabled students, but funding only made available to students without disabilities, or those who could attend on campus classes.

Equal access in funding just as important
What good is the equal right to study if there isn't equal access in funding? A virtual classroom is still a classroom. Lots of University students receive training in medical settings, theaters, swimming pools, gymnasiums, fields and streams. If those settings can be considered classrooms, why not the virtual classroom? An even stronger point in my favor was that PHEAA regulation, written long before the computer age, allowed part time funding for correspondence schools. If a correspondence school could be approved, how much more so should a virtual classroom in which I speak to the professors every day and my work is monitored in real time?

I pointed those things out in phone calls to PHEAA, but I still got a denial. I contacted the Disabilities Law Project, the public interest law firm in Pennsylvania that advocates the rights of people with disabilities. They are particularly interested in cases involving the right to work. The attorney assisting me, Carlesha Halkias-Greene, urged me to begin the fight for my rights by writing a formal letter to PHEAA asking for reconsideration.

I was pleased and surprised to get a counter offer from PHEAA. They would offer my case to the Special Grant Administrative Review Board for a decision. However, if the Board decided in my favor, it would only help me. The decision would not apply to all the other people with disabilities who need Higher Education to get back to work. I asked Ms. Greene if I should accept. Would it be ethical to accept a compromise that only benefits myself? She surprised me by saying, "Many changes come in only small increments. Over time, the small changes can add up to beneficial system reform."  That was pretty encouraging, so I wrote back to PHEAA that I would accept a special case grant. It's been two months, and I'm still waiting on the decision. If I don't hear soon, I'll have to go ahead and file the ADA complaint anyway, because you only have 180 days after being denied equal access to file an ADA complaint.

Supportive staff