DREAM Weekly Email: October 1-14, 2017

DREAM Weekly Email, Disability and Higher Education in the News: October 1-14, 2017
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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)
 
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Weekly Email Update on Issues Related to Disability and Higher Education 
Weeks of October 1-14, 2017
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Disability and higher education in the news (in no particular order):
 
* Buzzfeed has an article about universities struggling to keep up with student demands for mental health services and students’ growing awareness of their rights: https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosebuchanan/heres-why-more-and-more-students-are-suing-their?utm_term=.hwK3Kl2dj#.fo1EZx1G8
 
* Delta Sigma Omicron, a disabled students’ fraternity at the University of Illinois established in 1949, has slowly decreased in membership as other student organizations grew and Alpha Phi Omega fraternity became more inclusive of students with disabilities: https://dailyillini.com/news/2017/10/04/disability-services-fraternity-notices-decrease-membership/
 
* Over the past two weeks eight lawsuits have been filed in Manhattan related to colleges and universities with inaccessible websites, part of a wave of 37 such lawsuits filed against campuses since 2015: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/nyregion/college-websites-disabled.html
 
* Sex education for teens and college students is incredibly important, says this article in Teen Vogue: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/disabled-sex-ed
 
* Oberlin College’s Office of Disability Resources faces questions from the community as three staff resign last year, its interim director left this fall, and staff were told to stop communicating with students and families about “staffing shortages”: https://oberlinreview.org/14501/news/office-of-disability-resources-faces-staffing-shortage/
 
* With pressure mounting to provide more mental health services with less, many campuses are asking professors to take on roles in supporting student mental health, leading Slate to ask if professors are the “new therapists” on campus (DREAM warns readers that this article does not present students with mental and emotional needs in compassionate way, and contains derogatory terms of such students while also implying they are likely to be violent, which is factually inaccurate and contributes to more stigma about mental illness and disability): http://www.slate.com/blogs/better_life_lab/2017/10/05/professors_are_the_new_therapists.html?elqTrackId=4078b93f30eb47a1ae8ad54e4f1dc40d&elq=0b69fd90f2214727a1c158582b5fa432&elqaid=15962&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=6886
 
* A new “Disability is Diversity” club has started up at Loyola University Maryland: http://thegreyhound.org/site/2017/10/08/disability-is-diversity-club-hosts-first-meeting/
 
* Read a review of the movie “Deej,” which is now touring the country – it features DJ Savarese, the first “non-sppeaking autistic student to attend college on a residential campus and live in the dorms” (as he describes himself in promotional materials): https://oberlinreview.org/14473/arts/deej-highlights-interdependence-challenges-assumptions/
 
* Wheelchair racing legend and Olympic and Paralympic medalist Jean Driscoll is leaving a 30-year career at the University of Illinois and moving to North Carolina State University, where she will be the Executive Director of Development for the College of Design: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2017-10-10/ui-legend-heading-nc-state.html
 
* Professors often think they know which accommodations students really need, but their stories about how students “not needing” accommodations are false, says a graduate student instructor with a disability who has heard too many of them: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/gradhacker/disabled-grad-school-when-you-tell-me-disability-story
 
* The University of Hawaii Manoa Center on Disability Studies hosted the 33rd annual Pacific Rim International Conference on disability and diversity this past week, drawing almost 1000 participants for sessions that included topics related to higher education (video has captions but no audio description): http://www.hawaii.edu/news/2017/10/10/international-conference-on-disability-and-diversity/
 
* The Trump administration has rolled back mandates for health insurance companies to cover birth control, and a columnist in the Northwestern University newspaper writes that this will make college students less safe and less healthy, since many women depend on hormonal contraception to treat chronic illnesses: https://dailynorthwestern.com/2017/10/12/opinion/soto-rollback-birth-control-mandate-will-make-college-students-less-safe-less-healthy/
 
* 42 years ago, the first wheelchair user showed up at the University of Sydney in Australia, and the struggle for accessibility continues today, in this article that traces the history and issues: http://honisoit.com/2017/10/hell-on-wheels/
 
* Five tips for being a graduate student with a mental illness, from University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student Jill Richardson: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2017/10/13/five-pieces-advice-grad-students-dealing-mental-illness-essay
 
* Sarah Deckert at Framingham State University has to call someone to let her into the building where disability services is located, because the building doesn’t have automatic door buttons, illustrating how a campus can be in compliance with the law but still not be accessible: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/20171012/fsu-student-humiliated-by-lack-of-automatic-doors
 
* “We’ll tell you what to learn, when to learn, and how to learn” – in this New York Times piece, Jonathan Mooney describes how he figured out that schools and universities were the problem, and not his learning and attention differences: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/opinion/learning-disabilities-attention-deficit.html?_r=0
 
* The “What Makes Us Human?” podcast from Cornell University has a new “Disability and the Human Experience” episode featuring disability studies professor Susanne Bruyère (with transcripts available): http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2017/10/new-humanities-podcast-disability-and-human-experience
 
* Three days before classes began, the University of Nebraska-Omaha told Cassie McAllister they were withdrawing her from a class because they couldn’t covert the course materials into braille, so she is filing a formal complaint, alleging discrimination (video has captions but no audio description): http://www.ketv.com/article/uno-student-files-complaint-alleges-school-violates-ada/12808608
 
* The Stanford Undergraduate Senate is hearing proposals for students with disabilities, including funds to establish a permanent space for students with disabilities on campus: http://www.stanforddaily.com/2017/10/10/senate-talks-increasing-resources-for-students-with-disabilities/
 
* Assistant track and field coach Britten Olinger is returning to work at Montreat College, using a wheelchair and service dog after he acquired a disability six months ago in a car crash: http://wlos.com/news/local/recovering-track-coach-britten-olinger-returns-to-montreat-college
 
* Students of Texas A&M University professor Vaughn Bryant are being taught via video-conferencing software as he undergoes cancer treatment and is isolated in a germ-free room: http://www.theeagle.com/news/local/texas-a-m-professor-won-t-let-illness-keep-him/article_d8005a73-2984-534e-bac5-f6f827b530a9.html
 
* Grand Valley State University has established a campus-wide policy forbidding students from audio recording lectures without permission from professors; students with disabilities must have permission from professors and be in contact with the Disability Support Resources office: http://www.lanthorn.com/article/2017/10/news-gvsu-lecture-recording-policy
 
* North Carolina State University has reached a settlement with student Laura Auman, after denying her a cat in her residence halls because the university had no policy on emotional support animals; the university must provide Fair Housing Act training to staff an publicize its policies on assistance animals: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article178261431.html
 
* Students with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) can absolutely go to college, and here are some tips from people with SMA that may help: https://smanewstoday.com/2017/10/05/5-tips-for-going-to-college-when-you-have-sma/
 
* Law student Christopher Mallon is suing Queen’s University Belfast in Ireland for a “catalogue of failings” including disability discrimination in a unique case where he is a student, an employee, and an independent contractor, but chose to sue as an employee: https://www.legalcheek.com/2017/10/phd-law-student-sues-queens-university-belfast-for-catalogue-of-failings-including-disability-discrimination/
 
* A faculty member at the University of Southern California was detained after having what police called an “episode” during class, when she falsely told students there was an active shooter on campus, prompting a lockdown and police response; students were offered counseling after the event: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-usc-shots-fired-call-20171002-story.html
 
 
 
And a few related items of possible interest to college students:
 
Halloween is coming up!  Let’s try to make the festivities a little more welcoming for people with disabilities – here are a couple of classic tips from previous DREAM newsletters:
* Pick costumes that don’t mock or oppress people with disabilities – watch this captioned video for a friendly look at what costumes may imply (no audio description available): http://www.rootedinrights.org/video-does-your-halloween-costume-marginalize-people-with-disabilities/
* Remember that disabled people are not the scary ones, and asylums should be seen as the horror they are, not simply cool places to go ghost hunting: http://nursingclio.org/2015/10/29/ghosts-are-scary-disabled-people-are-not-the-troubling-rise-of-the-haunted-asylum/
 
* New York Comic Con featured a panel talking about the importance of including disabled characters in comics: https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/10/10/disabled-characters-new-york-comic-con/
 
* After mass shootings like the recent one in Las Vegas, it’s easy to blame mental illness, but it’s also wrong: http://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/other-voices/article177922381.html
 
* The ACLU of Illinois has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that police brutality was magnified for people with disabilities; up to 50% of people killed by police had a disability: https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2017/10/05/aclu-police-magnified-disabilities/24260/
 
 
 
 
 
This week’s issue of the DREAM weekly e-mail is available at the DREAM website, with archived back issues available, as well (http://www.dreamcollegedisability.org).  For more information about DREAM or AHEAD contact Wendy Harbour ([email protected]).
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please go to http://ahead-listserve.org/mailman/listinfo/dream_ahead-listserve.org.  Wendy Harbour can also handle requests to subscribe or unsubscribe. 
 
By the way, please don't presume DREAM, the National Center for College Students with Disabilities, or AHEAD agree with everything in these links we send out - we're just passing along the information so you can form your own opinions.  Thanks.