Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) members began obstructing tourist-related signage across campus 9.30 a.m. in a bid to direct attention towards colleges’ failure to uphold their LENS (Learning Educational Needs Summary) Report obligations to students. Through a LENS Report students with specific educational needs can seek accommodations and support from college often relating to exam conditions or lecture content. Currently the system largely relies on the actions of individual lecturers leaving some students at a significant educational disadvantage.
Over the past week, TCDSU has been following a policy of “making the college inaccessible for those who make it inaccessible for us” and have created the website www.lensreportsnow.com/ which provides information on LENS reports and calls on students who have been left without accommodations to submit their experience. QR codes leading to this website have been placed across campus on top of QR codes leading to the Book of Kells ticket website.
A survey conducted by TCDSU and the Trinity disAbility Service found that 48.2% of respondents had to request their accommodations and that 61.3% of students experienced difficulties with their accommodations. This was highlighted by the students taking action today with one such student Kendall Baebler stating that “students with LENS Reports, with agreed accommodations that the university has already granted them are not actually getting those accommodations. So what we’re doing is trying to have this week of action to pressure the college to pay more attention to students who already have LENS reports.”
Nina Crofts, TCDSU Citizenship Officer stated that ‘If college doesn’t work for the students, we’re not going to let it work for the tourists. We’ve been obscuring anything tourism related, directions to the Book of Kells, maps, things of that sort. Just so tourists are confused when they get on campus just as students are confused about their LENS reports.’
Another student Keira Shelley highlighted the effectiveness of their week of action, commenting that “the school of History had zero percent of LENS reports fulfilled and since doing our actions any student that has gotten a LENS report have now been contacted about their accommodations, so there has been an actual change.” Shelley pointed towards a change in TCDSU strategy indicating that while precious actions taken by TCDSU targeted individual schools, TCDSU is now looking to see pressure applied on Schools directly from the Provost’s office.
College has been contacted for comment.
