Voices in our Heads
OpED: The Disability Rights Movement Is Not Invisible
Editor: The following OpEd, “The Disability Rights Movement Is Not Invisible,” was written by Kirsten Hernandez, a student at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). Hernandez is President of Students with Disabilities at Large at the school.
Kirsten Hernandez
Within the past two decades, we have seen a massive shift in the awareness of civil rights issues. There has been the legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states, the Black Lives Matter movement has pushed the discussion of race in our society to the forefront, and the #metoo campaign has kickstarted a storm of women sharing their experiences of sexual harassment and assault. I am proud that so many of these formerly marginalized groups have now made their voices heard. However, there is one group whose voices are not being heard. As the President of Students with Disabilities at Large at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), I have witnessed how students with disabilities often find themselves afraid to push others to address their concerns.
“I feel so silenced by this fear that I often can’t open my mouth about my identity,” says Christiana Koch, Senator for Disability affairs for CSULB student government.
Discrimination and Disability
I am a proud Chicana woman. I have never struggled because of my race or my socio-economic class. No one has ever discriminated against me because of the color of my skin or the language I chose to speak or how much money I had in my bank account. I have, however, been discriminated against because I am hard of hearing in a world that is dominated by the able-bodied. When I got my first set of hearing aids in 12th grade, I began to fully understand what the word “ableism” means because I began to live it every day. While it was easy for me to write off the ignorance I faced as high schoolers being high schoolers, I was alarmed when I went to college and it only escalated. When out in public, I couldn’t escape the grasp of ableism. One time, a mother with a child who appeared to be about seven pointed to me. The mother told her child that she would turn into me (meaning a person with hearing aids) if she didn’t stop listening to her music at a loud volume. I consider myself fortunate because I have the privilege of being able to hide my disability by taking my hearing aids out. Not everyone with a disability has that privilege.
According to the U.S. Census 2016 American Community Survey 40,747,411 or 12.8% of Americans are disabled (The percentage of non-institutionalized, male or female, all ages, all races, regardless of ethnicity, with all education levels in the United States reporting a disability). Locally, nearly 1,500 students out of the 38,000 at California State University, Long Beach utilize the assistance provided to the Disabled Student Services office. Many members of the student body and faculty aren’t trained on how to interact with disabled students and fellow faculty in a non-threatening way. At the Disability Ally training hosted by the school this past semester, a small fraction of the CSULB community attended, with none of those people being professors.
Barriers and Disability
At CSULB, we can see the second-class citizenship that the disabled community finds so common in their lives. The CSULB marketing campaign “No Barriers” promises that students of all colors, sexual orientations, and creeds will find a welcoming community for them. What many students find ironic is the University’s campaign conveniently forgets to mention that for students with differing abilities, the Long Beach campus is full of barriers. If you are disabled and tour the campus, you will soon discover how difficult it is getting from class to class.
For those unfamiliar with the University, it is built on a hill with very limited wheelchair access. Braille signs are falling apart in multiple locations, televisions in the University Student Union and school social media accounts fail to provide consistent captions and image descriptions for deaf and blind students, and ACCESS drivers (a service offered by the county for disabled citizens) have a hard time navigating the campus with the constant flow of construction. Some buildings, such as the Faculty Office 4 building, don’t even have elevators to offer access to the students who need it, a flagrant violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This building is important because it houses many of the school’s most prominent organizations, such as La Raza and the Asian Pacific Islander Resource Center. The building in question has been standing on the campus since the fifties, which begs the question of why the problem is taking this long to resolve.
Disability is not a Second Class Status
We can also see that the school’s priorities don’t lie with the disabled student community when we look at the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) on campus. While the Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs recommends that counseling centers maintain a ratio of 1 to every 1,200 students on campus, CSULB violates this by having only 12 counselors on hand, making that ratio more than 3,000 to one. For these issues, I don’t blame Disabled Student Services or Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at CSULB. Over my three years on this campus, they have been there for me when I have needed them the most and are staffed with hard working and dedicated people. I choose to place blame on the general administration of CSULB, the California State University system, the California Board of Education, and the Federal Department of Education. They allow people with disabilities to remain second-class citizens by either dismissing the issue as irrelevant or in the case of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, consciously strip these protections. The disabled community just wants access to the same empowering equity as every other minority group on campus and in the greater community.
Education is Power
This struggle begins with educating everyone about the issues facing the disabled community. There is currently a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that will strip perhaps the biggest victory in the disability rights movement, the Americans with Disabilities Act. House Resolution 620, the ADA Education and Reform Act of 2017, if passed, would require businesses to make their properties accessible only if there is a formal complaint filed. If this is the first you’ve heard about this bill, you’re not alone. Since the bill’s introduction in January of 2017, only five major news outlets have reported on it.
The United States has been embracing the idea of intersectionality, which means that we won’t be truly equal until we fight for everyone’s rights. This should also include the fight for the rights of all students with a disability.
Editor: PalacioMagazine.com reached out to the Press Office at CSULB for a reply. They have not sent us one to date. If they do, we will print it.
