LIVING WITH DISABILITIES DOESN’T LOOK THE SAME

Student Disability Services enables the Ole Miss community to listen to students with disabilities as they share their college experience.

The panel is named after the book written by James Charlton called “Nothing About Us Without Us.” This book argues that the people that best know how to aide people with disabilities are those with the disabilities themselves. This panel aims to convey this same sense.

“Critical disability theory is about being disabled and being disabled by society,” Student Disabilities Service’s Assistant Director Corey Blount said. “It is not a diagnosis or a disorder that disables somebody. It is the way we built our world. A person is not disabled because they use a wheelchair. They are disabled because we don’t have curb cuts and ramps.”

Five students, each with unique disabilities talk about the different experiences that they have at Ole Miss. They talk about the fact that just because they all have registered disabilities with the University doesn’t mean that their experience is the same.

“I think I speak for everyone who I say you cant just have an idea of what a disability is and use that to say I understand how you are feeling,” Rhett Unbehagen said. “You can be empathetic towards how we feel. You can sort of understand why we feel a certain way.”

Unbehagen has exercise induced anaphylaxis. This means that exercise can cause his lung to stop working. He uses a handicap pass to get around campus, but if the handicap parking is full, he doesn’t have the option to just walk a little bit farther.

“I have a lecture in Conor Hall… We have been in school for 16 weeks now,” Unbehagen said. “I have been to that class seven times, not because I don’t want to go but because I learned that that entire complex with two buildings has six handicapped parking spots which are usually full at 2 o’clock in the afternoon… or the elevators just don’t work… I don’t have the choice to say ‘oh thats fine.’”

The panelists state that many of their teachers have been helpful and accommodating when it comes to dealing with disabilities. They state that many of the accommodations that they receive from teachers are simply utilized so that they are on the same baseline as everyone else.

Yet there are so many things that disabilities affect that people do not thing about on a daily basis. Kris Colvin is a student at Ole Miss who also happens to be deaf.

“Public televisions…,” Colvin said. “I have no idea what’s going on because the captions aren’t on. I am excluded. I don’t have access to the basic information that everyone has access to. Access is everybody’s responsibility.”

Blount stated that someone’s lived experience is something that we cannot fathom without being in their shoes. It is unique to their situation and what works for one person may not work for the next.

Unbehagen said that one of the things that affects him is the fact that the laws about accessibility often do not apply to him. He said that many of them make getting places accessible for wheelchairs, but don’t always make the distances shorter which affects his condition.

There are things that are particular to each person that make daily experiences unique from other peoples. These things are often not thought about. There are over 1300 students with registered disabilities according to Blount. 

“Think about being in the Pavilion at Steak and Shake how do you get your food?” Blount asked. “They call you number. If your deaf and a skilled lip reader you can maybe get 30% of what people are saying…. It’s stuff like that that we take for granted.”

This panel was not one that asked the audience to pity those with disabilities. They called for quite the opposite.

“Be human and let them be human,” Blount said.