1. Without Facts …?
It is impossible to obtain objective information about the quality of a college’s services for disabled students. For other identifiable groups, we can get numbers, but not for disabled students. Members of those other groups are typically vocal about their experiences, but rarely disabled students.
My wife and I have planned to leave funds in our estate for Amherst College in the hope that it will maintain the commitment to disabled students that I encountered during my undergraduate years. But without even minimally objective data and views openly expressed by disabled students, how can we be confident that our gift will be used for its intended purpose and spent wisely? Similar questions ought to be asked by organizations that currently fund accessibility services around the country. I don’t have complete answers, but I have given it a lot of thought and had conversations inside and outside Amherst about what is needed.
2. Which Numbers?
The fundamental obstacle to an assessment of Amherst College’s performance when it comes to disabled students is its refusal to supply numbers. True, statistics can seem so abstract as to miss the human element. They can also be manipulated. Nevertheless, facts are crucial if we’re to have confidence in the direction we’re headed, and the closest we can get in many cases to objectivity is through numbers.
Note that I am not advocating for the disclosure of names or personal details. Also, although the focus of this post is Amherst College, it is not alone; similar practices are in place at other institutions.
The one number Amherst discloses is that 27% of its students in 2019 used accessibility services. This number is so large as to render the term “disability” meaningless. It covers everything from blindness to paraplegia, schizophrenia to depression, broken bones to food allergies.
Each disability has its own accommodation requirements. For a college’s success in accommodating disabled students to be quantified, “disability” must be broken down into distinct categories. Wheelchair users need curb ramps, buildings with alternatives to staircases, adapted elevators and bathrooms, and so on. Blind students need books, exams and other materials rendered in a form accessible to them. But how well a college accommodates a paraplegic is no indicator of how well it does a blind student, and vice-versa. Based on my experience many years ago, Amherst is ideal for a blind student, thanks to the low faculty-to-student ratio and other factors. By contrast, the campus is hilly which can, as recent undergrads alerted me, make getting around hard for wheelchair and cane users.
Informally, disabilities are divided into two broad categories: visible and invisible, with visible disabilities typically being physical and invisible ones being mental. A wheelchair user can’t pretend away their disability. By contrast, someone who has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder might go through life with hardly anyone knowing it was diagnosed. However, some physical disabilities, such as chronic pain, needn’t have an outwardly obvious form, while Saturday Night Live’s mockery of Elon Musk’s Asperger’s-related facial expressions shows that mental disorders can have visible manifestations.
Even a distinction between physical and mental disabilities is awkward. Mental disorders often have physical causes. More problematically, the word “mental” comes loaded with historical insults. Unfortunately, I can find no satisfactory word.
I must own up to a contradiction in my own thinking. On the one hand, I firmly believe that Amherst needs to disclose numbers so that outsiders like me can assess the performance of its Accessibility Services. On the other, I recognize that social prejudices can cause hurt. I don’t have a simple resolution for this quandary. Perhaps those disabilities that put the person at demonstrable risk of more serious consequences could be placed in a separate category and excluded from some or all disclosure obligations. I’m not sure. However, I am sure that in most cases, disabled young adults should not be protected from life’s difficulties. Reflexively hiding behind claims of student privacy does them a disservice.
Each field of disability has experts who should be consulted to determine what information can be made available for the benefit of disabled students and outsiders wishing to support them. Although paraplegia, blindness and deafness have differing needs, one could argue that the accommodations they require come with quantifiable costs. Other disabilities might call for flexibility in such areas as classroom participation and attendance. Apart from administrative, the costs of such accommodations might be minimal. I offer this latter example out of ignorance, but to suggest how accessibility services might be separated into component parts whose costs and effectiveness can be assessed in coherent terms.
I focus here on accessibility services. However, Amherst should also release the number of current undergrads experiencing specific disabilities. Administrators need not be concerned if there is no, say, deaf student in a given year. Admitting someone who is deaf for the sake of showing receptivity to deaf people can be as harmful as accepting none at all. However, if there aren’t any for several years, the report would function as an alarm.
Contrast the practice of withholding data with how colleges measure the performance of other designated groups. The number within each one is reported. Average test results are measured in relation to overall performance. In addition, the achievements of other groups are celebrated. Amherst’s officials tell me the College is proud of its disabled students, but they speak only in generalities, and I’ve noticed no publicity around a single disabled Amherst student or graduate.
3. Disabled Students Must Speak Openly
To teach and encourage students to express themselves is a logical objective for an educational institution. No argument there, you’d think, but there’s one exception: disabled students. I was surprised to find how unwilling today’s Amherst disabled students are to talk openly. With one exception, each one I spoke to did so only after I promised not to disclose their identity. They said they’re afraid, and they sounded it.
Undeniably, disability comes with stigma. As a teenager, I hated to use my white cane unless absolutely necessary. I’d carry it folded in the conscious delusion that no one would notice, and I was delighted when strangers didn’t catch on right away that I couldn’t see. Fortunately, I outgrew much of that shame as I went through college.
My thoroughly unscientific survey of a handful of Amherst students informs me that they still feel the stigma. Those who can act as if they have no disability do just that except when they seek accommodations from Accessibility Services, in which case the College promises anonymity.
The one exception is someone I’ve observed from afar. A current Amherst student who identifies as disabled, Willow Delp, writes a fairly regular disability-related column in the student newspaper. Even in Delp’s excellent reports, the sources insist on anonymity. You can read them at https://amherststudent.com/author/willow-delp-26/
Instead of encouraging disabled students to express themselves, colleges make a virtue of protecting their privacy. It’s the dubious rationale for Amherst’s refusal to release even the number of blind students currently on campus, even though for the past six years it has been zero.
Amherst officials have an answer for each concern identified in this post. They assert confidence in the college’s accessibility services. They point out that they have a procedure for the anonymous filing of disability-related complaints. They deny witnessing signs of disabled student fears about openly expressing themselves. There are contradictions here, but I don’t think they see them.
So long as disabled students silence themselves and college administrators encourage them to do so, their lives will remain secretive and, as such, tarnished by shame.
4. What Is a Concerned Alum to Do?
Here I am, supported by my wife in wishing to show my appreciation for the life-changing experience Amherst gave me. But without numbers and anecdotes, what assurances can the College’s officials give us that our gift would usefully serve blind and other disabled students? Would the administration even welcome such a gift? How about if we set up a scholarship fund for blind students? But if Amherst isn’t accepting any, the money will just sit in some low-interest-bearing account, if that. After all, so long as Amherst makes it too difficult to get information, why would a disabled high school student take the time to apply?
5. In the Break of DEI
Today’s attack on the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) represents a disturbing rollback of advances that America has made in creating a fairer society for all. The history of reform movements is one of two steps forward followed by a step or so backward. Still, in what I earnestly hope is a temporary retreat, there is a constructive message. To put it bluntly, treating disadvantaged groups like children does damage. If a college administration is to fight for its disabled students, the students must join in. Put the other way, disabled students must advocate for themselves if colleges are to meet their needs.
John F. Kennedy said: “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society.” To the extent that Amherst keeps information about its accessibility services secret and declines to encourage disabled students to express themselves, it is holding them back from participating in that free and open society.
As gay people have demonstrated in recent decades, the way for disabled people to join the mainstream is not to hide. When a disabled person stops pretending away their disability and shows determination to overcome it, they earn the respect of their nondisabled neighbors. Familiarity, it turns out, breeds not contempt, but acceptance.
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