“WUPD isn’t going to take me to the hospital any more.”

It took nearly two weeks before I could even repeat this sentence to my friends without crying. After my residential college director relayed the Washington University Police Department’s message to me, I felt scolded and abandoned for seeking proper and much-needed medical treatment. After my multiple emergency-room visits for the same problem, WUPD had deemed me unfixable.

The root of the problem is a flawed and dysfunctional medical system at Washington University. Students are told to first make an appointment with SHS if they need non-urgent medical treatment. Then, if the need arises, they can be transported to a nearby hospital, either by ambulance, a WUPD officer, or alternative means. At each juncture in this process, students face a myriad of difficulties that limit their treatment.

SHS appointments are generally booked far in advance; by the time your appointment day arrives, the problem has usually either been resolved with at-home remedies or has become much worse. The other option is arriving at SHS without an appointment, which generally involves a considerable wait time if you go during a busy time of day.

These problems would be solved if SHS provided a wide range of available times when students could be treated. But SHS is only open during typical work hours and one hour on Saturday, and it is closed for all of Sunday. This schedule seems to completely disregard the fact that it exists to serve college students. With classes and other obligations during the day, most students are only free for long SHS waits during weekends or, at the very least, nighttime on weekdays.

Last year, Student Life reported on issues with SHS’s mental health processes, yet this deficiency often extends to patients there for physical maladies as well. Long before my hospital visits and WUPD’s message, I tried going to SHS. After a brief assessment, the doctor told me that my symptoms were baseless and exaggerated and that I should sleep it off, despite my medical history. I promised myself right then that I would not return.

Given that EST determines that a student needs to go to the emergency room, there are a few possible protocols. If the student fails one of EST’s tests or is at risk of fainting, EST sends them in an ambulance. Otherwise, EST arranges for a WUPD officer to transport the student.

At first, WUPD was extremely helpful in transporting me to the hospital: while everything else about the circumstance was stressful and frightening, I knew I could rely upon safe transit.

After a few necessary transports to the ER, WUPD told me that, if the need arose, I would be taken either by an ambulance or have to pursue alternate transportation. WUPD would no longer transport me to the hospital themselves if my symptoms resurfaced.

As a freshman, I don’t have a car or any close friends able to drive me at a moment’s notice, since resident advisers are not legally able to drive their freshmen to the hospital. I asked WUPD if it was encouraging me, a female minor, to order a cab to the hospital under reduced mental capacity. It simply reiterated its decision.

Going to the hospital takes a great emotional and physical toll; yet WUPD treated me as if I were doing it frivolously and without necessity. It shamed me for trying to take care of my health and disregarded my needs, with seemingly no concern to my health or my emotional state.

If WUPD is providing a service, it cannot pick and choose which students that service applies to. To do so is to unfairly discriminate against and ignore an entire sector of Washington University students.

SHS is no better. For a medical professional to flat-out deny a patient’s symptoms is a major breach of trust. If SHS exists for the benefit of the students, which you would hope something named Student Health Services would, then its limited hours and sub-par care only detract from the Washington University experience and the well-being of the University’s students.

I hope to someday live in an environment at the University where students’ health—mental, physical and emotional—is prioritized, and a culture that discredits and demeans the students who ask for help is eradicated.

However, today is not that day.