University of Maryland disabled students form advocacy group to air their concerns to administration

From The Diamondback at the University of Maryland:

Tired of dealing with inaccessible buildings, overworked counselors and an administration disabled students say is too slow in addressing their grievances, students are banding together to create a group they say will advocate on behalf of the university’s disabled population.

The tentatively named Disabled Students Union will serve as a venue for both disabled and able-bodied students to air their concerns on the university’s disabilities provisions. It will also serve as a social outlet, said women’s studies graduate student Angel Miles, who is spearheading the student group’s creation.

“This is not going to be just an advocacy group but a social one as well, where people can come in knowing that they are welcomed,” Miles said. “I want this to set a model for the rest of the community of what inclusion looks like.”

The club will also focus on raising university awareness of disability issues, advocating for student needs and helping the administration prioritize problems, she said. One pressing issue raised earlier this year was the need to create an improved emergency preparedness plan for disabled students in buildings with limited access.

The group, which Miles said will be all-inclusive, will focus on problems facing students with mobile, psychological and learning disabilities. While the exact number of students with disabilities on the campus is unknown, more than 1,000 students are registered with the Disability Support Service.

Administration officials said they hope the group can help bridge the gap between them and the disabled student population. Though it is unable to actively help, the President’s Commission on Disability Issues is supportive of the creation of the Disabled Students Union, Chairman Gay Gullickson said.

“I would be very happy to see a student group form that would raise the university’s consciousness of disability issues,” Gullickson said. “It could be a great way for students with disabilities to have direct communication with the administration.”

Miles and others in the disabled community said it’s about time the university had an advocacy group for disabled students — other minority student groups such as the Black Student Union, Chinese Student Association and Latino Student Union are well established.

“This group is a superb idea because other minority groups have organizations on campus, and according to the United Nations, people with disabilities are the largest minority group, so this is something that is really needed on campus,” said junior American studies major Aaron Kaufman, who has cerebral palsy and usually uses a wheelchair to navigate the campus.

Part of the union’s mission will be to provide disabled students with an alternative to the Disability Support Service, while also making it more difficult for the administration to discount disability problems as individual problems, Miles said.

“[Administrators] say, ‘Oh that’s Angel’s problem’ or, ‘That’s Debra’s problem,’ and don’t see it as a problem with the system,” Miles said. “If we voice our issues as a collective, the university will hopefully start seeing things as an instructional problem, an institutional problem or an attitude problem.”