My name is Katherine Vroman and I am a fourth year doctoral student pursuing a degree in Disability Studies and a graduate research assistant at The Institute on Communication and Inclusion (ICI). I am writing in response to the recent articles centering on “facilitated communication” or “FC.”

This past fall there were three articles released across national media outlets featuring a narrow narrative about facilitated communication. That narrative was echoed by The Daily Orange and purports that people with disabilities who type to communicate are not the authors of their own words and thus not worthy of consultation about their own lives. The D.O. articles lack not only the voices of individuals with disabilities who do utilize this communication strategy, but also read without the nuance that is vital to the complex considerations of how to encourage justice for individuals with disabilities in society.

Can you possibly imagine trying to exist in a world where you have no access to communication? Where you have to prove your competence in every space you enter? Where you are deemed so far from human that a student newspaper can be goaded into writing a series of articles that dare to tell you something about your life — that your life isn’t a life worth living — without consulting you at all? The Daily Orange’s attempt at this kind of sensationalized journalism is, to use your own language, “inexcusable and concerning.” However, as I seek the ever-elusive motivation to push through my doctoral work, I am ironically thankful for the reminder that it’s necessary and important. SU has an uncompromising history of approaching education and access for individuals with disabilities from a social justice perspective that locates the “problem” not in people, but in society. We have a long way to go, but remain undeterred.

I am not naïve when it comes to the professional risk involved with deciding to pursue this work. I’ve been counseled by mentors throughout my field that hitching my career to this disciplinary niche may compromise my future employability. Frankly, I don’t care. In a recent Education Review piece, James Paul Gee reflects on his career in academia, offering sage advice for young faculty and graduate students: “Pick only the battles really worth fighting for and fight them and them alone. How do you know which these are? They are the ones that when you really think about it are worth taking real risks of damage to yourself and your career for. They are the ones where winning means making the world a better place.”

This is one of those battles.

Katherine M. J. Vroman, EdM
Doctoral Student, Disability Studies 
Syracuse University