Wedged in the basement of the Lecture Hall is an office that often goes overlooked by Binghamton University officials, according to its director.

Services for Students with Disabilities, which had nearly 300 students registered last semester alone, is having difficulty providing even the services the office is legally obligated to supply, said Director Barbara Jean Fairbairn.

According to Fairbairn, the office’s biggest challenges include an “inappropriate” location and a low number of full-time staff — four to be exact — for the growing number of students requesting aid.

“With the increasing numbers and the increasing needs of students that we have, we are currently experiencing difficulty with insufficient resources to provide the access services that they need,” she said.

As Fairbairn put it, SSD covers the whole “gamut,” from mobility conditions to autism and psychiatric illnesses to an especially high number of learning disabilities.

As a result of the changing nature of disabilities, the number of students seeking aid has almost doubled over the past decade.

In 1991, the office was moved to a “temporary space.”

Sixteen years later, it’s still there.

The current space is “far too small” and “inappropriate” for the hundreds of students who need its support, Fairbairn said. University construction plans call for the relocation of the office to the first floor of the Old University Union in the spring or summer of 2009.

Fairbairn hopes the move will allow her department to make students with disabilities more comfortable, especially when it comes to confidentiality issues.

But the location shift won’t resolve problems the office has providing alternative format textbooks, note takers, sign language interpreters and other services, she added.

“Obviously the monies just have to be made available to pay for those personnel, and what becomes difficult for this office is the coordination of all that,” she said. “Not just the space, but the administrative labor-intensive processes that go into hiring, processing, time sheets, permeating 90 note takers every semester.”

In addition to providing legally mandated services, SSD helps students with temporary disabilities, coordinates transportation for some of its users with the help of the Off Campus College Office and manages academic needs, like time extensions on exams.

“We’re working harder but we’re not providing the value of service we’re accustomed to providing,” Fairbairn said. “We need assistance in order to assist the University with the University-wide responsibilities.”

Director of the Discovery Program Elizabeth Carter, who worked as the interim assistant vice president for Student Services last semester, recognized the issues facing the SSD office, but said that Fairbairn is “one of many” dealing with conflicts that have followed the recent enrollment jumps.

“We just haven’t been able to keep up with the increase in terms of staff for her office, and in terms of better location and that sort of thing,” she said. “We’re seeing this problem throughout campus. As the number of students grow … all offices are suffering from not having enough staff to serve all the students.”

Carter said University officials are also struggling to employ sufficient staff numbers in departments like Health Services and the Counseling Center, but proposals are being put forth to get more employees.

“Right now just because of that enrollment growth, it’s a case of we need help everywhere,” she said. “We really need help in almost every office.”

One student served by SSD said that she realized the office’s emerging needs when it comes to staffing and other resources, but that faculty has always been on top of any issues she’s encountered.

“Ever since the beginning I’ve had a very positive experience with the SSD office,” said Elizabeth Crumb, who has cerebral palsy. “I love the [SSD] office, they’re really nice down there and they really are very helpful, and they really are here for the students.”

Crumb, a senior majoring in human development, said that one semester marked a difference in her needs being met at BU, as the switch in her course locations to the University Downtown Center proved difficult.

“The [UDC] campus really is not that accessible and wheelchair-friendly,” she said. “It’s kind of one of those things where they’re [SSD] working on it and they’re pushing the University to try to make it more accessible, but the University is saying it takes time and that sort of thing.”

“So the [SSD] office is trying but it just seems like they’ve got limited resources and limited power within the University itself,” Crumb added.

But despite Fairbairn’s concerns, she said it was irrelevant whether it is her office or another that gets students help — just that it gets done.

“I don’t feel the need to build a kingdom,” she said.