Eric Engoron never knows if he’ll make it to class—let alone leave his dorm. Rain or snow could confine him to his building, a broken building elevator could mean he can’t attend class, and having no button to electronically open a door will make even entering a building very difficult.

And these aren’t even his biggest challenges.

Engoron, a sophomore at Stony Brook University, was born with Cerebral palsy, a physical disability that affects his balance. But it affects it so severely that if he were to stand up without support, he would fall. This means that he has spent his entire life relying on either a walker or a scooter to get around.

Disabilities are very prevalent in our society, with one-in-five people afflicted. At Stony Brook alone there are students with a wide range, including learning disabilities like dyslexia or ADHD, psychological disabilities like depression or anxiety, and physical disabilities like blindness or deafness. Although Engoron’s inability to walk on his own is more apparent than some, the challenges he faces through Cerebral palsy are representative of the vast majority.

And like many of them, these challenges have less to do with his physical capabilities than with the response he gets from his peers. Although Engoron was accepted to the university based on the standards held for every other student, having a ‘normal’ college career means ignoring the daily reminders that he is different from them. Most are simply not used to being around people who use a scooter or a walker to get around, and it is this lack of understanding that has turned the computer science major’s ability to balance into a defining aspect of his college career.
“I’ve honestly had people come up to me and start talking slowly because they think I wouldn’t understand because of my scooter,” said Engoron. “I get it at least twice a week.”

Donna Molloy, the Interim Director of Disability Support Services/ ADA Coordinator at Stony Brook University, explained that the more students are used to seeing and interacting with peers who have a physical disability, the less it will seem like such an oddity.

“But I think it will take time,” said Molloy. “And I think that the more people see other people with disabilities who are doing exactly what everyone else is doing, that will also reduce the stigma.”

“I know how it feels to be on campus with a disability and just have people be nasty to you,” said Allie Trevisan, a psychology major at Stony Brook University who transferred to the school last year after a bad dance injury.

Trevisan spent her first three months on campus relying on crutches to get around. She tried using a scooter but quickly stopped, because of the reaction she got from her peers.

“I think once they saw me on a scooter, other students just thought that I was incompetent in every way possible,” said Trevisan.

But Engoron remembers a time when his disability wasn’t such a defining aspect in how people viewed him.
He lived in Brooklyn until his first year of high school. During that time, the friends he had were almost all ones he had met in preschool. Their exposure to his disability at a young age meant they did not define him by it.

But when Engoron’s family moved out of their apartment and into a house on Long Island, making new friends posed a difficult challenge. It required a lot of sifting through people who only saw him as a “disabled person.”
“Some people just thought I was different and didn’t want to talk to me,” said Engoron. “So you have to find the good people—well the people who see you as a person, not as a charity case.”
Some of those people are his suitemates.

Engoron and the four students assigned to his suite in Yang last year are all living together again this year. They have become the ones he feels closest to on campus. Not only have they learned to look past his physical challenges, but one even borrowed his scooter to see what it was like.

After being gone for only 20 minutes, he returned and said a single sentence to Engoron: “I don’t know how you do it.”
For the vast majority on campus who see him simply for his disability, he has found a glaring double standard in the way they treat him. He has found that his scooter and walker make those around him assume he is in constant need of help.

“If I’m in a dining hall and someone comes up and talks to me, it’s ‘can I throw that out for you?’ or ‘can I carry that for you?’,” said Engoron. “I’ve been doing this my entire life, so I’ve developed ways to pretty much do everything.”
Engoron remembered one particularly surprising incident last week when he was using his walker to get from his dorm room to the Union.

(It is important to note that a single step for him in his walker is the equivalent of one pull-up, because he can’t balance on his legs. So for him to travel between the two buildings he would have to do at least 1,000 pull-ups.)

Needless to say he needed a break when he reached the Student Activities Center, or SAC. But as he stood in place, catching his breath, a girl came up behind him and started pushing his scooter, assuming he was stuck. He said it actually took a little convincing to get her to leave him alone.

“It’s hilarious, I don’t know why she thought it’d be a good idea,” said Engoron.

Now, this is not to say that Engoron doesn’t struggle with certain things that those without Cerebral palsy find second nature.

His scooter is electric, so he can’t get to class if there’s too much snow or rain, or else it will electrocute him. He relies on elevators to get upstairs and buttons to mechanically open doors for him. And when these malfunction, which happens frequently, he has to miss class and rely on others for help. Just last week he missed five classes because of a broken elevator in the Union.

Plus, there are no buttons to mechanically open the doors to the school’s Computer Science building—the building for his major.
“I just have to wait for someone to come and open the door for me, or just do it myself,” said Engoron. “I’ve figured out a way to do it, but it’s not the easiest thing in the world. Especially because those doors are glass, so if I make one wrong move, I go through the glass.”

Everyone faces his or her own personal challenges each day. The difference is that for those whose challenge is not quite as noticeable as Engoron’s, people wait for them to ask for help.

For Engoron, they do just the opposite.