DREAM Weekly Email: November 15-21, 2020

DREAM Weekly Email, Disability and Higher Education in the News: November 15-21, 2020
 
From DREAM: Disability Rights, Education, Activism, and Mentoring
Sponsored by the National Center for College Students with Disabilities and
the Association on Higher Education And Disability (AHEAD)
This week’s newsletter and archived newsletters are available at www.DREAMCollegeDisability.org
 
 
Top Five News Items This Week:

• Faculty stress, secondary trauma and burnout are now becoming chronic mental and emotional health issues.
•  “Run” is a new movie about a young woman with a disability heading to college – it’s the first major thriller in 70 years that headlines an actual wheelchair user, who also happens to be a college student at Columbia University.
• As institutions like universities deal with increasing numbers of disabled and chronically ill people, Khairani Barokka says we need to let go of ableism, consider what disability can teach us, and consider why some “unreasonable” requests by disabled people are suddenly “reasonable” for everyone.
• The Atlantic discusses high abortion rates around the world for fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome despite people with Down syndrome having longer lives, more work, and college opportunities – but should those be used as proof that their lives have value?
• A professor at Saint Mary’s University in Canada wrote an article criticizing diversity initiatives, and said Indigenous Mi’kmaw speakers should go through disability services if they want considerations for using English as a second language, treating their identity as a disability.

 
 
General News:

• New Mobility magazine has published Wheels on Campus with their top 20 colleges for wheelchair users;
• The Think College National Coordinating Center published its annual report on Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disabilities (TPSIDs).
• The University of British Columbia has started a Disability Affinity Group for faculty and staff with disabilities.
• Did you know the football huddle was invented by deaf players at Gallaudet University?
• A new “Find Services” app in New York state will help people connect with social services; it includes information for college students and those with disabilities.
• Canada offers a registered disability savings plan similar to ABLE accounts in the U.S., but many university students don’t know they’re eligible.
• The University of Maryland Baltimore County is undergoing multi-year campus-wide accessibility improvements, and at least one undergraduate is hoping a new Disability Cultural Center will be part of the plan.
• UC Davis has established a new MIND Institute program for individuals with intellectual disabilities will be the first on the West Coast to offer residential living on campus.
• In Ireland, women, people with disabilities, and minorities can be stuck in “insecure work” in higher education, with difficulty getting higher-level jobs.
• “And They Were Roommates: Navigating Inclusive Mentorship in Higher Education” premiered at the Syracuse International Film Festival – the student-directed documentary features students from Syracuse University’s InclusiveU.
• Georgia State needs a sensory room, according to a new opinion piece in the student newspaper.
• Actor Nyle DiMarco is hosting the Media Access Awards, while working on a comedy series based on his life and a film about the Deaf President Now movement at Gallaudet.
• With many students having limited access to mental health services now, the University of Georgia system is putting a plan into place that includes online and phone-in clinical services, a hotline, and other services.
• The  Texas State University student government senate passed “The Excused Absences and Tardies for Chronic Illness and Disability Act” to allow senators with a disability to be excused from meetings without a doctor’s note.
•  A new public art piece in Greensboro, NC uses sight, sound, and touch to tell stories of blind and low-visioned people – it’s a collaboration between UNC and the Industries of the Blind.
• Students with disabilities in India can have great difficulty finding hospitals that provide disability documentation for the undergraduate admissions NEET exam.
• The annual Cybathon competition in Zurich brought together university and private company teams to compete in everyday tasks using cutting-edge technology like eye-controlled wheelchairs and bionics.
• There should be “reasonable adjustments” for many types of students, says Oxford doctoral student and activist Penny Erhardt.
• Louisiana State University students with disabilities are turning to student government, the disability resource office, and administrators to make the campus more accessible.
• Landmark College received a $1 million grant to improve dual enrollment options and transition programming for neurodiverse high school students.
• Learning American Sign Language from online course  can be a great way to spend time during the pandemic.
• Student wheelchair-users at Davis College campuses created a new Wheelchair Mobility Experience video game to help users understand what it’s like to get around with a wheelchair.
• “Art for Change” at Temple University displayed student art about substance use disorders.
• POZ honored 100 activists for HIV and AIDS issues, including Joyce Mitchell of the Capital City AIDS Fund, who promotes awareness, services, and scholarships for college students.

 
 
BIPOC and Diversity Issues:

• During the pandemic, there have been large declines in BIPOC student enrollment – especially for Native American, Black, and Hispanic students.
• Continuing its multi-part series on accessibility, Brandeis University looks into access, academic, service and University police issues related to race and disability.
• Students and local activists are protesting and occupying the State College Municipal Building in memory of campus police killing Black student Osaze Osagie, a Black State College student with autism and schizophrenia.
• Young women from the Asia Pacific region (including college students) talked about sexual and reproductive health for women with disabilities, as part of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
• Universities are developing protocols for professors harassed by hate mail, including Dr. Sami Schalk, professor of disability, race and gender studies at UW-Madison.
• Ipul Powaseu has set up the Papau New Guinea Assembly of Disabled Persons and participated in a UN series about gender while finishing her doctorate in Australia.
• A new guide helps parents and K-12 educators advocate for LGBTQ students with disabilities who have IEP plans or 504 plans; tips in this guide may help with transition planning, as well.

 
 
COVID-19 News:

• Deaf and hard-of-hearing students are dealing with unique accommodation and communication issues during the pandemic.
• American University students with disabilities share the ups and downs of online learning during the pandemic.
• The CDC is discouraging college students from traveling for the holidays, and people in high risk groups should consider levels of risk before participating in family gatherings.
• Coronavirus vaccines may be available soon, but questions remain about when college students can get them, and whether universities will be able to distribute them.
• Jamesha Waddell, a student at Livingstone College (an HBCU) passed away from COVID-19 – she is the fourth U.S. college student to die of COVID.

 
 
Student Stories

• In the trial for the Toronto van attack in 2018, a forensic psychologist said Alek Minassian did well in college until he began failing courses and his autism left him “vulnerable” to a killer in the Incel movement.  Autism groups are releasing statements protesting the line of defense.
• Blind Jamaican student Ralisa Dawkins, a former professor at The University of the West Indies’ professor, won a Fulbright Scholarship to do doctoral-level work in the U.S.
• After a lifetime of trying to “mask” her autism, BYU student Natalia Poland is getting accommodations and appreciating every little aspect of college.

 
 
Faculty and Staff Stories:

•  She was told she’d never go to college because she had autism, but now Kaycee Bills is a professor at Florida State University.
• Professor Bill Vicars teaches American Sign Language at Sacramento State University, and his free online instruction videos that are going viral.
• Professor Jane Green was honored by Selkirk College for her work promoting inclusion and reframing of disability.  

 
 
 
 
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By the way, please don't presume DREAM, AHEAD, the NCCSD, or the U.S. Department of Education agree with everything we send out - we're just passing along the information so you can form your own opinions.  Thanks.
 
DREAM and the NCCSD acknowledge, with respect, the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe -- the Indigenous people on whose ancestral lands DREAM and the NCCSD are based.  We hope our work honors them.