“One of the major barriers to HRT access was that most providers required a therapist’s letter — some even required two,” said Tarett Blusk, a senior majoring in English. “I could not justify spending months going to therapy for something I already knew about myself, plus the money it would demand.”
“[Disability] is not about being less than,” Szymanski said. “People with disabilities are large on campus, we’re over 10 percent of the student population, and in the country it’s 25 percent of the population. We want to take disability as identity and show people on campus, ‘hey, theres a lot of things that people with disabilities can do, maybe we shouldn’t think about all the things people with disabilities can’t do.”
June 9, 2019. Ali Stroker wins Best Featured Actress in a Musical at the 73rd Annual Tony Awards. An actor, singer, and wheelchair user, Ali Stroker has been a trailblazer for disability representation on the stage. She was the first wheelchair user to graduate from the Tisch School of the Arts Drama Department at New York University. In 2015, she was the first wheelchair user to appear on Broadway, starring as Anna in the musical, Spring Awakening. For her performance as Ado Annie Carnes in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma!, Stroker became the first wheelchair user to win a Tony Award in 2019.
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