Office of the Diversity and Equity

KU Disability Network

Media

Striking Out for Solidarity

New group hopes to create cohesion among the scattered disabled community on Mt. Oread

Whatever the social setting and whatever the disability, people with disabilities share a common experience of social oppression.

— disability historian Paul Longmore, quoted on the UC-Berkeley website on the disability rights and independent living movement

It’s hard to force change when you’re a minority of five. When you compose 0.019 percent of the student body at KU.

Five = the number of students last year who reported having mobility issues. No wonder it took until this year—17 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guaranteed their rights—for KU to buy a few buses equipped with lifts.

For other oppressed groups, a situation like this is called separate and unequal. For students with disabilities at the University, it is called ‘not enough funds,
— Dot Nary, a KU graduate student and wheelchair user, wrote in a letter to the The University Daily Kansan a couple years ago in an effort to lobby for the new buses.

That number—five—makes other minority groups at KU look robust by comparison. There were 902 African American students, for instance, last year, and 906 Latinos (each comprising just 3.4 percent of the student body).

Perhaps this is why it wasn’t until the mid-’70s that the doors of KU were cracked open for people with mobile disabilities. This was when Roger Williams, a wheelchair user, sued the university at a time when nearly all of campus was inaccessible. And today, 17 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guaranteed equal opportunity on paper, opportunity is far from equal in practice.

The rest of the Lawrence.com article is located at their website.