[nabs-l] Presence of disability organizations on college campuses

[Darian Smith]

Hi kaiti,
  
 I have ran across much  the same difficulties when wanting to organize a disability related club on campus.  
 On our campus we had a     faculty member willing to act as an advisor, but the  biggest issue was getting the word out. at the time I had also been serving on our student council and much support had come from my fellow council members, and really anyone who  had heard of the effort. the only issue was getting  that announcement out  to students who signed up with the DSO.  I could not and still don’t understand  why  sending out a note via e-mail would have been so difficult.  The  Campus has a high tech  lab that students with disabilities would  use, and as I had a good relationship with the  lead instructor there, I would ask them to relay information.    more recently the campus had more of a  system-wide e-mail that  announcements would go  through. it would send out  an announcement a few times a semester, and if I  was still keeping at it, I would have gone about using it  to further the organizing effort.  Sadly, at the time I had a crazy amount of responsibilities on  campus, in the classroom, in the federation and in life so I kind of needed to cut back on some things.
 If the DSO is not being as supportive, is there any possible way to find out why?
 
 How about department heads? do you have a  relationship with any of them that they might get word out to their departments? 
 Also RAs could see that the info gets  disseminated to their dorms  and so-on.
  hth 
  Darian              
> On Feb 11, 2015, at 1:04 PM, Kaiti Shelton via nabs-l <nabs-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi NABSters,
> 
> I'm hoping to hear some of your thoughts on this:
> 
> Last semester I got in touch with one of the professors I have now so
> we could prepare for her class.  In passing she mentioned a few times
> that she was getting some practice because she currently had a
> visually impaired student in her section for non-music majors.  This
> surprised me, as I had no idea there were other students on campus.  I
> did meet another girl from my hometown in one of my eye specialist's
> waiting rooms who started at UD that semester, but the class was a 300
> level so it was unlikely that it was her (which it wasn't).
> 
> I asked my DS coordinator once if there were any other visually
> impaired people on campus.  She told me only vague things like,
> "You're the only JAWS user," and "We had a deafblind grad student a
> few years ago," but no clue as to what any demographics were like.
> 
> Fast forward to this semester, the girl my professor had joined the
> ensemble that accompanies the course, and I did the same to take
> advantage of the extra credit opportunity.  We had this little "get to
> know you party" at the professor's house, and that was when she and I
> really started talking.  It was like, "Boom" for me, and possibly for
> her as well.  All of a sudden there was someone who understood my
> frustrations with the constant and always moving construction, the
> issues I was having getting my proof of purchase from the bookstore,
> and had the kind of attitude I have about blindness.  We're also both
> interested in things like martial arts, music, and learning about
> different cultures.  We're both juniors as well, although our majors
> have largely accounted for us never bumping into each other until now.
> 
> I absolutely understand the need for confidentiality from a
> professional perspective, but the other girl and I agreed that it
> would have been so beneficial for us to have been able to swap ideas
> and such for the past 3 years.  Our university is all about
> "Community" and "Diversity," yet there are no disability-related
> student organizations on campus.  There are clubs for everything from
> College Democrats and Republicans, to ethnicity-related clubs, and we
> even have a gay-straight alliance called Spectrum.  There is no club
> which acknowledges students with disabilities or provides them a place
> to meet and exchange ideas if they so desire though, so we'd like to
> do something about it.
> 
> From being vice president of a fledgling club before, I know some of
> the specifics about how to get a club started.  You need faculty
> sponsorship (which probably cannot come from the disability office),
> you need a constitution or bylaws, and you need at least 5 people to
> achieve club status.  The tricky thing I see if we end up going
> through with this process will be to market the group to people who
> self-identify as being a student with a disability.  Putting flyers in
> the DS office would make the most sense, but I don't think we'd be
> able to do that.  I also don't think they'd be able to email anything
> we send to them to distribute, and they would never give the list
> email to a single student.  We'd want to make sure it was accessible
> to everyone but even OrgSync can be challenging to use for
> screenreaders (including those who use them for reading and not
> necessarily vision-related disabilities).
> 
> Have any of you started up a club like this successfully?  Is it
> something that was worth the process?  Any ideas?
> 
> -- 
> Kaiti
> 
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