WORD COUNT: 610
The introduction to Jay Timothy Dolmage’s Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education is both an enlightening and unquestionably horrific opening to an issue running rampant across the United States and Canada. While I wasn’t necessarily aware of the racist, xenophobic, ableist, and homophobic rhetoric was being touted and actively encouraged at the university level, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised by the knowledge. Appalled, but unsurprised, as the attitudes haven’t changed much. The heterosexual, the white, and the men still hold all the power (especially if they’re all three) and they still tout the same “fearful” rhetoric of becoming a minority majority, as if it takes away their power. If anything, it just gives them more power through their higher positions and fearmongering rhetoric, that sounds exactly like what Dolmage quotes from leading eugenicist Charles Davenport. So even though we’ve made it through the Civil Rights Movement, First & Second Wave Feminism, and the Stonewall Riots and have made several leaps in the advancement of minorities, these advances, evidently, aren’t much, especially regarding disabled persons on college campuses, where only the bare minimum is offered in terms of accommodations, simply to avoid legal ramifications:
“the use of higher education as a principle of equal opportunity—opened many doors and removed many barriers, but all too often disability was used to test the edges of opportunity; for people with disabilities, the equal access promised by the second step never really came, or only ever came in a qualified way. Here, while the discourse or discussion about disability was about welcoming and including, the back end was being built to construct disability purely under what might be called a medical and a liability model: define disability medically, treat it in a legalistic, minimalistic manner designed to avoid getting sued. This can force accommodation to happen, but it also tends to force—always and only—the legal minimum accommodation” (Dolmage, 2017)
Dolmage also informs the reader that, because the law requires only the bare minimum, colleges and universities don’t always tell you what accommodations they can or are willing to offer. This makes it especially hard for individuals like me, who have ADHD, to seek assistance where necessary.
My own experience with the Office of Disability Services is such that because I’m not seeing a psychiatrist (but a therapist, who cannot prescribe medications), I don’t have any paperwork to bring to ODS. I know that I have trouble focusing on one thing at a time and deadlines are my worst enemy, but because institutions rarely ever codify the services and accommodations offer, I don’t know what to ask for to gain assistance. More than that, any accommodations for shifting deadlines wouldn’t provide any assistance or preparation for post-school life in the real world. So, without the proper psychiatric paperwork prescriptions from a prescribing doctor, there’s really nothing I can do about getting accommodations. And, even if I did, there’s always the stigma, as Dolmage notes, of being considered to have an “unfair advantage.” My only option is to keep arguing with doctors about my treatment, hope for the right medication, and suffer through my inability to focus and hope beyond hope that my brain doesn’t set me up for failure.
Dolmage’s introduction has given me more insight on how universities are failing to accommodate students like me and students who have it worse than me. While we’ve made some in moving past the eugenicist movement of forced incarceration, forced sterilization, human experimentation, inhumane conduct and mistreatment, we as a society still have a long way to go with regard to how we treat our fellow humans that aren’t Straight, White, and/or able bodied.
References
Dolmage, J. (2017). Academic Ableism. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
