Secrets and shame

Secrets and Shame
Well, this is my first to do so. Please bear with me. I have seen a lot of injustices in my life hell; I am fully disabled and couldn’t believe what I was dealing with. If you haven’t seen any of my articles before, please read some of them.
I want to talk about the College system I am currently going to. Well, you would think with all of the money they are making through property taxes and tuition grants from the state, not to mention some of the money they are getting through donations, you would think they would be a little bit more “helpful” when it comes to something like this. Welcome to Tarrant County College System. If you can go anywhere else, go. I am currently going to the Tarrant County College Trinity River Campus.
The student class governing body is led by a bunch of teenagers who think it’s great to have something like the board on their transcript and to go on trips. The only thing we do in the meeting is to review what each club has done since the last meeting, and the open forum is at least ten minutes to handle anything that needs to be addressed. Since last semester we have not had the blue police phones fixed for the safety of students or any panic buttons. Whenoneofthesenatorswantedtobringupthefact that there is no transparency in SAR or TRIO and that she had a binder of complaints against them, the Student governing board stated that she needed to see the president after the one-hour meeting and that it was not to be brought up again. I am still determining what happens after that meeting.
Talking about safety, there is only the fact that the campus I am currently going to is right next to the police station and across from the jail system. That is it. I only see an officer walking the halls in the morning, and after the first set of classes starts, that is it. Now when the high school kids show up and with all the buses, some are down there. We have a lot of homeless in this area, and having an officer in the place would be safer. Even though there are so many police vehicles and carts on the second level, which takes up a lot of parking in a six-level structure, where are the officers? Yes, I have seen security guards in the area, but they are on the older side, and frankly, they can’t take anyone down. Closing this paragraph with all the money, they would have handled this better. One officer and one security on each floor with classes, and use the cart and your cars more so walk around the lunch area, talk to students, and make them feel like they are family. There are a lot of study areas that are not “rooms” where students are. How about getting to know your students?
Student Accessibility Resources and Trio are a joke and have no education in helping students in so much need of help. Students of the Trinity River Campus who need these services are sorely being mistreated and not allowed. According to other people I spoke with, this is an epidemic on all campuses. To start the process, you have to jump through hoops, and just like the Social security Administration, you will be denied help more than once. Many students give up and either take on the problem head-on or drop out. But the student enrollment reports will not show that the SAR and TRIO are the reason for the dropout.
While we are on “help,” I want to tell you something that happened to me, and the results will be for another article. As I said before, I am currently going to two different colleges. It took me twenty years plus to get my associate’s. I am still waiting to hear from someone from the college to see if they could help me or if I need any assistance. It wasn’t until last semester that I heard of SAR or Trio, even though I have been disabled since 2019.
I am returning to what needs to be said in an English class whose professor will be blacked out until the results are made. Come to find out from a good friend who works for the school, and there have been a lot of complaints against this professor. She targets the disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent. She is also very well known for accusing students of plagiarism. Because of this professor and her actions toward me, I was in a very dark place. My friend who I mentioned above talked me out of that funk. I have emailed certain deans; however, because this professor will not acknowledge that I did not plagiarize anything, I have dropped this class, and my GPA has improved. I am majoring in English and a published author, so this type of Libel is grounds for a lawsuit I have no problem bringing against her and the school (Webster, n.d.). Emails to SAR and Trio have been sent, and as this article is written, more needs to be taken care of. Nothing will likely be handled because this professor, even though this is an online class, doesn’t work for Trinity River. There needs to be a better board of complaints and handling of complaints; frankly, one campus should not be allowed to bully another campus’s students.
I know there is a shortage of teachers, and I get it. However, the mental health and the teaching of students should not be affected by the lack of respect that some of these teachers have towards the disabled community. I can prove you wrong if you say that money is a factor. There is enough money to not only hire good teachers but pay your students who work there better not only that but to reduce the amount of money it takes to eat. This is just from property taxes, not including grants from the state and other donations. (TCCD, n.d.) I will write an update about this later.
Keeping on the “help,” do you know that students and people who work there have no clue what to do in a medical emergency? For example, I was standing in the bookstore, remembering that I am battling cancer and have had thirteen surgeries, waiting to get my books taken care of, when I started to feel light-headed and nauseous. I had to grab a chair and told them to call the nurse; they gave me a trash can, and twenty minutes later, an older security guard came and talked to me; at that time, I was starting to feel better and got my stuff taken care of, and I walked out into the area under the stairs and waited for a friend to come and get me. I have been told by another student who has a seizure good luck in coming out of it or having an ambulance called. She had to crawl back to her office to get help. No one knows what they are doing regarding this, a significant safety hazard.
I am sorry to say there have been no drills for anything from an active shooter to a natural disaster. Out of the twenty-plus years, there has only been one drill, and that was a fire drill, and that wasn’t very pleasant coming down from the fifth-floor stairs. Not to mention going back up and only three working elevators and no room for anything a disabled person might use, like an awheel chair or a walker. With five floors trying to go back to class, I will let you guess how bad my PTSD and my agoraphobia were. I know I was not the only person having issues that day, and to be honest, I just wanted to go home but stuck it out for the rest of the class. Doyouknowhowmanykidshadtoleaveclassthatonedayno teachers to direct us if there were some? I didn’t see any of them.
NowIwanttotalkaboutalltheopenspacesatTrinityRiver. IknowthattheCampusrentsouta floor to Tarleton College. That is great, but we have so many empty classes and so much space that here are some ideas for using some of that space.
Other colleges have a food pantry for items that are in need. How about just a pantry in one of those open areas for needed items I know we have a school store; however, there are so many things that the college system throws away. How about donating them to the pantry, like clothes that are out of style and other items that might be presented? I have seen students come to school during the cold winter days without jackets or holes in their shoes. Of course, food for the students that cannot afford to eat while at school. There are microwaves in the main hall.
Many students gather in the study area near the library, which is just so loud. How about you strictly use some of those areas for a quiet place and be enforced. Sometimes my agoraphobia kicks end, and I need a calm space. I am sure that other people like me have terrible panic attacks or other mental issues that require a safe space to re-center or study calmly with no actions taken toward them. The quiet cubes in the library are always accepted.
Many students go to school with Phobia’s how about making it a little bit easier and putting more classes back on connect? If I am if you are worried about who is going to grade, that is why you have a teaching assistant, or you can even have students that are trying to become something in the educational system put them to work as part of their grade, put them with the teacher that teaches the subject they want to teach and go from there If you have enough technical equipment. Also, the autoimmune students that have to wear a mask doing this would help them by staying home. If you cannot do this, the teachers need to be told if a student has something mentioned in this paragraph, give them some slack if a proof is given to the teacher. Doing this would change your light with the disabled community from dark to brighter.
This college system does not show any regard for being “all-inclusive.” Of their lack of enforcement of parking handicaps, they can have the teachers who are handicapped park on their level and leave the other disabled students to increase their handicapped parking in front of their school. No quiet places for mental health breaks. Teachers who target disabled students with no recourse from the higher-ups. The two organizations that are supposed to help don’t. Training for people who work in their buildings is optional. Security is being relied on by older guards and officers from outside. Technical coursesIamsadtosaywherebetterduringthebuildingbeingclosed. Thisis2023attitudetowardsthe disabled community should not be like this. We all need to do better.
Sheri Rhodes Senator Art House Publication
“PTSD, Disable, Agoraphobia, Multiple surgeries, Writer, Blogger, and Published Author.” Let’s have a conversation.

References
(n.d.). Retrieved from TCCD: https://news.tccd.edu/2020/09/01/notice-of-public-hearing-on-tax- increase-for-
2020/#:~:text=A%20tax%20rate%20of%20.13017%20per%20%24100%20valuation,2019%20tax %20year%20and%20the%202020%20tax%20year.
(n.d.). Retrieved from Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/libel