The Student Accessibility Support Center (SASC) hosted an opening ceremony on Wednesday, Sept. 18 to celebrate the installation of a new sensory room in the lower level of the Tabler Community Center.
Wendi Mathews, the executive director of SASC, said the sensory room is a place for students to relax and relieve stress, making it particularly helpful for neurodivergent individuals.
“It has typically been used for individuals with neurodivergen[cy], however it has been shown to help all individuals because you need a place to be able to calm down … using different manipulation tools that are in a sensory room can help people decompress,” Mathews said.
Mathews explained that they received positive feedback from students who used the sensory room in the SASC office. However, their office closed after the University experienced flash flooding the night of Oct. 18, rendering SASC’s sensory room unusable.
Ashley Conrad, the director of SASC, said that the previous sensory room’s limited hours of 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. restricted accessibility to students. The new sensory room in the Tabler Community Center is more accessible to students, as it is open from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Thaddeus Nelson, the assistant director of instructional support at SASC, explained that the new sensory room was the result of a partnership between SASC and Campus Residences.
“[Campus Residences] went through the rooms and spaces they had available and identified this as one that was big enough and available for us,” Nelson said.
Mathews explained that one of SASC’s goals is to open more sensory rooms across the University’s campus to accommodate the large student body. Nelson added that they are working on installing a room at Stony Brook Southampton and are currently evaluating what to include in that space.
The new sensory room in Tabler Community Center includes seating options such as bean bags, a reclining chair and a swinging chair. There is also a cabinet with pairs of headphones, fidget toys, remote controls to change the lighting and a speaker that plays white noise. The room has a large dry erase board, rainbow markers and a bin with legos that can be placed on the wall.
Within an hour of opening, many students stopped by and began to use the room, taking advantage of the comfortable seats to do homework. University mascot Wolfie also made an appearance, interacting with students and staff both outside and inside the room.
Ariel Berman, a junior majoring in history, attended the opening ceremony. She said that before she transferred to Stony Brook, she took part in helping the community college she attended create its first sensory room. Berman added that neurodivergent students may face additional challenges while in college, and spaces like the sensory room can help them manage their struggles.
“I really like that Stony Brook is committed to [helping] its neurodivergent [students] and the larger student population in general,” Berman said.
Zoe Diez, a freshman majoring in information systems, was another student who attended the opening of the new sensory room.
“College is an area where there [are] high sensory and high activity [outputs] … It is nice to have a room that you can come to escape that,” Diez said. Even though Diez’s dorm room is a significant distance from Tabler Quad, she said that it was worth traveling across campus to experience the new space.
“By bringing these types of things and doing these types of projects, we’re creating a culture of inclusivity on this campus where people can feel, [whether they have a disability or not], that there is more of a universal design approach here at Stony Brook, [and] that everyone has access to everything,” Mathews said.