Willow had noticed that while conversations around identity and marginalization existed on campus, disability — in all its forms — was often absent, or treated through a narrow and paternalistic lens. From the beginning, Willow’s writing resisted that framing. Writing about disability was about articulating an entire way of moving through the world.
“Disability,” Jay T. Dolmage writes in “Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education,” “has always been constructed as the inverse or opposite of higher education.” He describes higher education as producing its own version of “lower [less prestigious] education” in order to legitimize its especially sanctified status.
While building the environment is crucial, the attitude around it is similarly important: How do we ensure that all Amherst students, including students who engage with the world differently than the normative neurotypical and/or able-bodied standard, have the conditions they need to flourish?
I grew up with a disability, yet I had never once worried that I or the people around me would end up incarcerated because of their disabilities. Then, I realized that growing up in a privileged community with a well-funded school district had shielded me from hyper-criminalization.
My hope is that Anti-Ableist Amherst becomes one of many examples of disability writing in The Student and the larger Amherst ecosystem. I hope my writing can encourage other disabled and neurodivergent members of the Amherst community to share their experiences without shame, to be proud of themselves and their identities, and to express themselves with fullness and honesty.
As neurodivergent students, regardless of our physical distance from the Levant, we should never separate ourselves and our fates from those in occupied Palestine.
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.
Take the quiz: Check Your Ableism!
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