By Sophia Giatzis

The Office of Disability Services (ODS) at Fordham has seen a new record high of students registering with the office this 2016-2017 academic year, seeing a 38 percent increase in students registered with the office.
The increase in students registering with the office requires more staff to help make sure every student is taken care of. The director of the ODS at Fordham, Mary Byrnes, watched the registration numbers climb in her three years of being director.
“When I became director three years ago, we had 541 students at the end of that 2013-2014 year,” Byrnes said. “Right now, only at the beginning of this 2016-2017 year, we have 867 students.”
Byrnes predicts the number will climb to 900 students by the end of the 2016-2017 year across the Rose Hill, Lincoln Center and Westchester campuses.
When asked why there was a 38 percent increase in ODS registered students, Byrnes said, “We have a lot of students now with mental health disabilities,” Byrnes said. “More students are being diagnosed, which is a trend pretty much across the nation.”
According to Byrnes, the amount of mental health disabled students registered with ODS has increased 11 percent over the last five years, and it is now their “second highest category of students registered with ODS.”
Students with disabilities, mental and physical, can register with ODS to receive accommodations that help them, both academically and socially. These accommodations include scheduling tests for students who need extra time or a noise-reduced environment, making sure every hearing-impaired student has a flashing light fire alarm in their dorm room, helping students with visual impairments obtain the correctly formatted textbooks for the computer to be able to read it to them, and much more.
This increase in student’s registration with ODS has not only occurred at Fordham’s Office of Disability, but also disability offices at universities across the nation. Every month, Byrnes speaks with other Jesuit universities’ disability offices to discuss what they can do to improve their offices and how to adjust to the increasing registration.
ODS has adapted to this expansion in registration by expanding its team through the staff reorganization of Student Services and gift funds, according to Byrnes.
“In three years, our staff has grown from two full time people and one part time person to five full time people with one or two graduate student interns specializing in social work,” said Byrnes.
Over these three years, ODS made sure that its five staff members are qualified and able to complete a wide array of tasks for accommodating the 867 students across the three Fordham campuses, said Byrnes.
“There are tons of things that this office does to accommodate certain students for things that you would not even realize they needed,” said Byrnes. “There are a lot things happening behind the scenes to make sure every student gets what they need.”
The Office of Disability Services has also expanded its testing accommodations area at Rose Hill and Lincoln Center. Lincoln Center openedits new building at the Lowenstein Building and ODS expanded its office there to have three testing rooms to accommodate students there. Rose Hill, however, only has two testing areas, one in the ODS office and a new one in Keating. “It is hard to get space on the Rose Hill campus,” said Byrnes.
However, Byrnes praised the responsiveness of the administration, Facilities Management and other offices to students’ needs.
“When we asked for more people in our staff, the administration gave us more people,” Byrnes said. “When we put in a request for a flashing light fire alarm in a student’s room, facilities management gets it done right away.”
The ODS staff also recently added Bernie Stratford, who used to work at Career Services at Fordham, to their team to introduce another resource for students with disabilities.
“He’s been working closely with our students to find out what is the best way to help students with disabilities find the best jobs for them,” Byrnes said.
Byrnes said the office is committed to the students it serves.
“Not only are we doing things that we need to do for the students, but we are also doing things that we want to do for the students.”
The Office of Disability communicates with the Office of Residential Life, Facilities Management, Rams Athletics, University Health Services and professors at the Rose Hill, Lincoln Center and Westchester campuses to make sure every student is taken care of and gets the accommodations that they need.