Jay Dolmage, a University of Waterloo professor, gave a lecture at Syracuse University on Thursday night to raise awareness about the ways people with disabilities are excluded in higher education.

Dolmage, an associate professor of English language and literature, focused his lecture on three areas: the steep steps in Hendricks Chapel, the ramp that was added to the Holden Observatory and inclusive design of the National Veteran Resource Center.

He explained the steep steps metaphor as the stereotyped idea that higher education can only be accessed by those “fit to survive the climb upwards,” and that people with disabilities are pulled slowly up those stairs by the university. Instead of students and teachers, people with disabilities take the place as objects of study and are applied to other marginalized groups to keep them excluded from the university, he said.

Dolmage said this metaphor connected to the amount of negligence people with disabilities experience during their education. This negligence can be seen in the university’s spending records, he added.  

“In the United States, some studies show that two-thirds of college students don’t receive accommodations simply because their colleges don’t know about their disabilities,” he said.

Stephen Kuusisto, an SU professor and director of the Burton Blatt Institute, shared anecdotes throughout the lecture. The Burton Blatt Institute advocates for people with disabilities. Diane Wiener, director of SU’s Disability Cultural Center, led the discussion with Kuusisto.

Kuusisto said he was walking up a flight of stairs as a child in Helsinki, Finland, when a woman walked by him and said, “Tsk, tsk, a blind child. How sad.”

Dolmage talked about retrofitting infrastructure, or adding a component to something already built, like a ramp. Retrofitting often leaves people with disabilities in difficult positions or feeling degraded, he said, such as when academic syllabi only address people with disabilities in the final lines. He said retrofitted changes are by nature, not lasting.

He created a list of 1,000 Universal Design ideas, which allow for increased inclusivity, and recommended that teachers start applying them in their agendas. He also recommended that disability studies be included in the curriculum.

Teachers should adapt the process of universal design that will encourage students to show their knowledge in multiple ways, Dolmage said.

“I had been focused on a few students who rarely talked in class, and seemed tuned out,” he said. “When I allowed students to write reactions and ask questions on a message board, one of these students wrote a lot, and wrote the best questions and responses of the semester. The problem was that I had only been offering one avenue for participation.”

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Published on December 4, 2018 at 11:15 pm

Contact Abby: akweiss@syr.edu | @abbyweiss_21