Gearing Up for Graduation: ACCESS Celebrates
June 03, 2022 - 12:55 AM
ACCESS, Mt. SAC's program that assists students with disabilities and medical conditions,
threw a graduation party. The program has helped these graduates navigate the higher
education pathway, the physical campus, as well as the digital one throughout the
pandemic.
Students spoke of the help ACCESS gave them following the sudden campus closure in
March 2020 as California, then the entire country, went into lockdown.
With such a large physical campus, ACCESS provides shuttles for students with mobility
challenges to get to class. Students we spoke to said they would not have graduated
without this critical service. In fact, the current Student Center construction detours will have the ACCESS shuttles busy throughout
the Summer Intercession. 
ACCESS provides counseling, instruction, and other accommodations for students, operating
an Assistive Technology Center and a Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Center. These were well-represented
at the Grad Party.
The food might have brought them there...
...but the fun and festivities kept them there all afternoon. 
Students decorated their commencement caps, took photos in front of the backdrop;
and then, got the photos printed out on site.
They were then given frames to put the prints in and materials to decorate them.
The ACCESS graduates are now in the midst of finals and looking forward to Commencement. For more information on ACCESS, visit their website.
