L ISTENING TO S TUDENTS WITH D ISABILITIES Cultivating a Campus of Responsive Agents Dr. Tara Wood

Outline for Today’s Talk PART ONE: introduction to my project Introduction Study Background Reflexivity PART TWO: exploring disability identities Resistance Intersectionality Community PART THREE: exploring disability disclosures Risk Management & Responsivity Strategies of Disclosure

PART ONE Introductions

“Human beings make lives together by sharing their stories with each other. There is no other way of being together for our kind” (Siebers 2002).

The Study  Semi-structured interviews  35 students with disabilities  (both undergraduate and graduate)

Disabilities Represented  Mental Disabilities  Physical Disabilities  Chronic Disease  Learning & Cognitive Disabilities

PART TWO Exploring Disability Identities

Resistance Diane: “Tourette’s isn’t really me…I feel like myself as a person is more than my disabilities, and I shouldn’t be defined by my disabilities.”

Resistance Diane: “I always notice it. It’s the best way to describe it is try and keep your eyes open without blinking…if you try and keep your eyes open without blinking, you’re gonna eventually blink and then you look around and think, did anyone notice me blink? It’s always there. It’s always nagging at me.”

Resistance Gavin: “No, I don’t allow it to become a portion of my identity. It’s like anything else in life. It’s a problem. It’s a problem like, being an engineer, you think analytically about things so I’m more of the type of person who would rather identify any problem or any bump in my life and do my best to overcome that. My identity is not defined by whatever diagnosis I’ve currently been prescribed. I don’t allow it to because if I did, I’d just be more depressed of a person than I already have been.”

Resistance Gavin: “I do trust the doctors... they’re the ones who are much more educated and much more intelligent on the subject.”

Resistance Chesty: “The anxiety, I don’t want to put them off. I don’t want them to be weirded out. I think that with PTSD, veterans have gotten a really bad rap as far as that goes, so I don’t want them to be nervous.”

Resistance Mike: “too personal. It’s a mental health problem, and I don’t want people to look at me like I’m crazy or that I’m subnormal.”

Multi-dimensional Stigma Jake: “And so I thought I was dumb... I couldn’t stand having these remedial classes. I couldn’t stand being this kid who’s struggling.”

Multi-dimensional Stigma Jake: “Being pulled out of the normal classroom to go to a special classroom, even young children still understand that special equals different and different is a stigma.”

Multi-dimensional Stigma Blair: “I don’t want people to identify me by my disability because I’m in [pre-med]; it’s a really hard major and there’s already a stigma of being a girl. And it’s still really hard and I don’t want people to think I’m not as smart as everyone else. And then if I identify with my disability, people will be like, ‘Oh she’s not as smart as everyone,’ but that’s just not true at all.”

Multi-dimensional Stigma Greg: “It was just nice to have somebody understand where I was at. Because that is still such a stigma in society. It’s just not something that I want everybody to know about. And most people don’t know.” … “because it’s mainly associated with gay men. That’s it right there.”

Connection George: “I have the ability to help them and usually when I converse with individuals with OCD or depression or any other disorder, I usually learn stuff too. And so it’s a two-way street in a sense.”

Connection Hilary: “I’m pretty open about it because I hate the stigma of it.” Hilary: “I post on there a lot to help people who have just been diagnosed. Because I remember how terrible that was…I went through a period of great shame about it. I felt like, ‘Oh, I’m a freak. I can’t have a normal relationship.’ And I think if people have that shame, they won’t talk about it, but if you realize it’s not a big deal, it’s like diabetes: you go get treated.”

Connection Veronica: “…I think knowing other people with disabilities is helpful for people and I don’t know if that necessarily happens on a large campus like this...but I think it’s helpful just because you see what different kinds there are and also if you have something very similar, you can discuss it and you can say, ‘Oh ok, I realize that this is that learning difference coming into play and somebody else understands what I’m going through’...”

PART THREE Disability & Disclosure

Risk Management Tyler: “I’m still trying to figure out how to communicate about [disability] with certain people.”

Complexity of Disclosure Tyler: “And part of it was because I realized that no one in the art school knew about this condition whereas my entire family knows, all my closest friends know, people at my workplace know, so I was wondering if art has to do with the rest of my life, why am I not telling these people about it?”

Tyler: “You’re creating something and then other people are going to say I like that or I hate that. And it would be very hard if you do that too soon. It’s deeply personal…it’s an emotional thing.”

Risk Management April: “I should tell them but at the same time I feel like I’m gonna get scolded for not going to the disability center. I feel like they’re not going to respect that I’m telling them, very unofficial. So I try not to tell them unless I feel closer to them.”

Risk Management Tom: “They have to know. It’s like helping myself by telling them. If I try to pass as normal and not tell my professor, that’s really hurting myself…I guess it doesn’t matter if they accept me or not. It is what it is. I’m not trying to be their friend.”

Strategic Genericism  Disclosing disability but not sharing type of disability

Amber: “I don’t think they need to know, I guess. I don’t want them to treat me differently…everybody thinks that people with Bipolar are crazy.”

Strategic Genericism Leah: “I feel that sharing the specific disabilities I have with a professor is sharing things that can be easily judged one way or the other. Other disabilities are accepted by society as legitimate and thus, a professor can’t react badly to it. Migraines and depression, I feel, are things that general society might not automatically deem a disability. It might take having a conversation with someone like me, who has been so significantly affected by them, for a sway towards disability to happen. By not describing my disability, the professor doesn’t have the opportunity to judge whether it is legitimate or not.”

Selective Disclosure  Revealing some disabilities while concealing others

Lillie: “Learning disabilities tend to be accepted, and I almost feel like depression isn’t even a problem.”

A Sway Towards Disability…

Thank you.