“Inever felt like the world was out to get me as a disabled person until I came to Cambridge”, my friend Sidsel tells me. We’ve spoken about this issue more times than I can count, a natural result of being good friends who both happen to be visually impaired. Yet every time we do, I’m reminded of how few people in Cambridge I feel I can speak to about this, of how rarely conversations like it are reflected in student media: disability is not a mainstream topic at Cambridge.

In a way, this is part of what attracted me to university life here: Cambridge represented validation and acceptance, an escape into a non-disabled world that I’d never felt I belonged in. I hoped I finally wouldn’t have to prove my worth to people simply because my eyes didn’t work properly. If I was good enough for Cambridge, then surely I’d be good enough everywhere. My admission was a ticket to overcome ableism.

In hindsight, my thinking was both naïve and tainted with internalised prejudice. But it is a perspective I shared with my friend Sidsel—and I suspect with many other disabled applicants. This is unsurprising, considering the harmful narrative we feed ourselves: a disabled person can ‘overcome’ their disability by doing something non-disabled people think them incapable of. But this is a fallacy, and one that lies at the heart of the inequalities in the Cambridge academic system.

The myth of overcoming disability finds particularly fertile ground at Cambridge because it is expected that things will be difficult here: the workload is tough, the hours are long, and it’s common to feel overwhelmed. My assumption was that I could find success so long as I managed to keep up, working every hour I could to make up for my slower visual processing speed and sacrificing my social life to do so. ‘Academic rigour’ was a weight we all had to bear: why should being disabled mean it didn’t apply to me?

“If you’re unable to keep up, I do feel that you’re seen by others as unintelligent, or not as good”, one second-year Natural Sciences student tells me. She describes the frustration of not being able to work despite wanting to, of having to move swiftly onto the next topic without any time to catch up. “How much better could I have done if I wasn’t just always treading water?”

It is not enough to assume that being bright and hard-working will mitigate the impact of disability, especially in an inflexible system like Cambridge’s. One can be good at writing essays but a slow reader, studious but struggle to meet frequent deadlines. Intelligence comes in many shapes and sizes, yet we are all expected to fit the same mould.

I don’t think Cambridge is getting the most out of its students

“They’re interested in how you perform in their existing framework, rather than allowing you to show your knowledge in a suitable format”, Sidsel explains. She graduated with a Philosophy degree this year, and points out the greater emphasis on flexibility and creative risk-taking in her new job. “I don’t think [the University] is getting the most out of its students.”

The rigidity of this system can be detrimental to any student, disabled or not. But there is a fundamental difference between the kind of fatigue that might be alleviated by, for example, a reading week in the middle of each term and some rest from academic work during the holidays, and the fatigue caused by disability or chronic illness.

“I spend so much time doing disability-related admin”, an Education student tells me, a sentiment echoed by everyone I speak to. “The processes in place are laughable.”

The positive student response to Varsity’s recent investigation into the Examination Access and Mitigation Committee (EAMC) reveals the depth and breadth of frustration with this system. This is not a niche issue: any one of us could become disabled or chronically ill during our studies. Adjustments such as double time or Alternative Methods of Assessment are often helpful when granted, but the added stress and administrative burden of having to go to such unnecessary lengths to justify your right these adjustments to a succession of supervisors, lecturers, and panel hearings should not be underestimated.

You end up with the sense that the University doesn’t want us here

This feeling that we do not belong in the institution we worked so hard to attend is as demoralising as the barriers themselves. “You end up with the sense that the University doesn’t want us here”, the Education student adds.

This is not to suggest, of course, that every disabled student has the same experience of Cambridge. One student at Emmanuel told me they could not fault the support they received from their college, particularly their Tutor and Director of Studies, in helping them with exam adjustments and reaching a more thorough diagnosis of their chronic illness. “I feel I have been incredibly lucky”, they tell me. My own experiences of college support have been nothing but positive. Yet when colleges are responsible for supporting applications to the EAMC, variability in the quality of support for disabled students should not be a lottery.

The hope I felt as an applicant has quickly turned to disillusionment. I am no longer willing to sacrifice my wellbeing in the pursuit of the grades I know that I deserve, and that I would probably achieve with less work if I were sighted. The cost is simply too high.

This is partly why disability is not discussed more often: many of us simply don’t have the time. When work takes longer, extra-curriculars use up more energy, and there’s a seemingly never-ending pile of extra admin to get through, speaking publicly about these issues is often simply not an option. But it is not our voices which need to be raised: we are already shouting. The rest of the Cambridge community must shout with us.

Changing the system is not straightforward. A reading week would be a good start, but we need an acknowledgement that the negative effects of Cambridge’s system disproportionately impact disabled and chronically ill students, and that reform to this system would not inherently constitute a dumbing-down or dilution of academic rigour.

Only then can changes be made to reduce the burden on students, and to improve the woefully underfunded Accessibility and Disability Resource Centre. Only then will we stop feeling like an inconvenience, like we have failed Cambridge.

It is not a case of whether ‘academic rigour’ in its current form should or should not apply to disabled students: in reality, it was never designed with us in mind.