Disability Cultural Center director candidate Kathy O’Connell gave a presentation on disability culture Tuesday afternoon in Syracuse University’s Bird Library.

O’Connell is the first of three candidates to give presentations on campus, vying for the open position. Diane Wiener stepped down as director of the DCC in December to take a job at SU’s Burton Blatt Institute. Huey Hsiao, associate director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, has served as interim director of the DCC since January.

“Disability culture is about the transformation from a history of shame and oppression to one of ownership and value,” O’Connell said.

O’Connell said she wants to continue the DCC’s collaboration with other cultural centers at SU. This would bring the DCC to “all corners of campus,” she said.

She said she also wants to coordinate with, and at times challenge, SU’s administration to value people with disabilities. O’Connell hopes to bring a progressive focus on addressing ableism in its “overt and insidious forms,” she said.

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O’Connell holds a certification in rehabilitation counseling. She’s a licensed mental health counselor.

She shared a quote from Jay Dolmage’s book “Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education,” which she said summed up her view on ableism.

“Ableism is everywhere, not that it overwhelms all of good schooling can do,” she read. “But what we are all responsible for looking at it, recognizing our roles in its circulation, and seeking change.”

O’Connell, who lives with cerebral palsy, said people with disabilities should be leading more of the DCC’s programs.

“With all due respect to able-bodied people, it’s time for us to be leading disability programs more,” she said.

O’Connell said the role of the DCC director should be to empower students with disabilities to make the center their own, which includes making the DCC a place where community members can “come and just be,” her presentation read.

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After O’Connell presented for 20 minutes, she opened the floor to questions from dozens of audience members.

Jason Harris, a research associate at BBI, said the university should make a larger effort to support and hire more employees with disabilities.

Harris said that when he was a student at SU, he did not know many faculty with disabilities that he could look up to, and there were few faculty who came from a similar background as him.

He stressed the importance of SU working to better represent and support people with disabilities through faculty representation and resources.

“That’s really important for the students and also the structure of the university,” he said. “That would mean in this position and others, we’re hiring more disabled people.”

Dee Katovich, assistant director of the Taishoff Center for Inclusive and Higher Education, said academic departments at SU “don’t do disability,” meaning many professors and faculty often overlook disability issues, Katovich said.

Katovich asked how O’Connell could engage academic departments across SU. O’Connell said people might start to feel more engaged if they are included in discussions about disability issues.

“If we open the door and begin the conversation … people realize that ‘Oh, disability — promoting it, working with the challenges, applies so much to my life,’” O’Connell said.

The other two DCC director candidates will also present at SU this week. Stephanie Woodward will speak Wednesday, and Elizabeth Sierra will speak Thursday. Both presentations start at 11 a.m. in Bird Library.

Published on February 19, 2019 at 8:59 pm

Contact Gabe: gkstern@syr.edu | @gabestern326