Students Revive KADSA to Support Disabled Community Students Hope Club Will Be Outlet Greater Knox Community Talk About Disability,” Elswick Said
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NEWSPAPER PACEMAKER AWARD | 2017 | ASSOCIATED COLLEGIATE PRESS || FIRST PLACE IN DIVISION | 2016 & 2017 | GENERAL EXCELLENCE | ILLINOIS COLLEGE PRESS ASSOCIATION THEFEBRURAY 2, 2021 KNOXTHE STUDENT NEWS SOURCE OF KNOX COLLEGE | GALESBURG,STUDENT ILL. | THEKNOXSTUDENT.ORG @THEKNOXSTUDENT Students revive KADSA to support disabled coMMunity Students hope club will be outlet greater Knox community talk about disability,” Elswick said. for disability advocacy, support Elswick ended up having a and education. conversation with Director of Disability Services Stephanie BY CARLOS FLORES-GAYTAN Grimes where she learned there Co-Editor-in-Chief had previously been a club on The reforming of KADSA campus supporting disabled students called the Knox Sophomore Sophia Elswick Alliance for Disability Support has struggled with educational and Advocacy (KADSA). The descrimination her whole life because club had since dissipated and of her ADHD, and this did not change Grimes had been searching for when she came to Knox’s campus as a someone new to head it. Elswick freshman. immediately volunteered. It began with finding the process of This time, Elswick’s first transferring her accommodations from post on social media about high school difficult, and thinking it was reforming KADSA attracted surprising Knox only had two people interest quickly. This led to working in the Office of Disabilities. Elswick spending winter term But when classes started, Elswick also collecting student emails, found herself running into issues with setting up an Instagram and her instructors, particularly with one holding executive elections. professor who did not seem to want to Now, KADSA is alive again, deal with disabled students. with Elswick leading the exec Logo for the Knox Alliance for Disability Support and Advocacy (KADSA). (Coutesy of Sophia Elswick) “He basically took me into the team as President, and awaiting hallway and told me that I was stupid, the school’s response to their Gonzalez was diagnosed at age six disabled prior to transferring to Knox and that I was a horrible person, and all application for recognition as an official with Perthes disease, a condition affecting for the 2019–2020 school year. Shannon these horrible things,” Elswick said. student organization. blood flow to the joints, specifically the suffered from depression after becoming Elswick recognized the insufficient hips, making them brittle. disabled, which ended up preventing support for disabled students at Knox. Creating a community for disabled “I grew up really isolated from her from attending what was to be her But besides some other students with student everyone else, having to be homeschooled. first fall and winter at Knox. Shannon ADHD, Elswick did not know anyone And growing up, I felt as if I was the only experiences feelings of isolation, which else at Knox who was disabled. She KADSA is now meeting virtually on one disabled. And when I came to Knox continued when she eventually came to posted online about the idea of a club for Thursday nights, starting at 8PM central, College, I didn’t really see anyone else campus. disabled students but had no responses. with 12 to 16 people attending the first that had a disability,” Gonzalez said. “I didn’t really know anyone at all However, last fall term brought few meetings. Members described the Head of Support Danny Cerna- besides the people who lived in dorms ableism issues back to the forefront. meetings as informal, with most of the Núñez, senior, who is affected on a daily around me, and they were fine. So I had Elswick personally was dealing with a time spent allowing presenters to discuss basis by PTSD, says her perspective of to go through that by myself. I’m still recent diagnosis of the tissue disorder disability related issues of their choice. disability was impacted by growing up processing it. I feel like I have this long EDS and ongoing illness, which she again Exec members’ hope is that these in Mexico, where it was a taboo subject backlog of feelings,” Shannon said. “I found her professors to be unhelpful with. discussions will make disabled students matter that especially ignored mental don’t want anyone else to go through But a public turning point came when feel part of the community, as they health. what I did alone. I just want to be there The Knox Student published the student described spending much of their own “I think oftentimes we feel the for supporting other people, especially column titled “Goodbye, Evolution.” lives feeling as if they were alone in their need to hide our disabilities or hide our people who are younger than me, fresh The column was quickly condemned struggles. differences in general, and having a space out of high school.” by readers as ableist and implying “I always felt unseen, but here with that is safe for us to [be ourselves] and Vice President Alex Marcouiller, support for eugenics, subsequently being KADSA it was like, ‘oh, we can joke about express that was definitely necessary on sophomore, has had a chronic illness her taken down by TKS. In spite of the initial all these things of our past. There’s some the Knox campus,” Cerna-Núñez said. whole life, and says she learned to self column, Elswick found the response from other people that understand what pain Secretary Summer Shannon, junior, advocate from having to constantly do it her Knox peers heartening. I was going through,’ “ said Head of has a degenerative neuromuscular through her time in public school. “For the first time I was seeing the Advocacy Dayana Gonzalez, sophomore. disease and became permanently SEE KADSA PAGE 2 Fire safety report announced Campus Safety Annual Security resident assistant staff, and stuff like that as years go by.” and Fire Safety Report shows Nevertheless, Kemp said that the increase in liquor violations increase may spark Campus Safety to team up with Campus Life to reassess BY SARAH EITEL the effectiveness of Knox’s AlcoholEdu Co News Editor program. Kemp hopes that the numbers Campus Safety’s 2020 Annual for the following year will show a Security and Fire Safety Report showed decrease but is expecting to see the same a 59% increase in liquor violation in the rest of the crime categories due to reports that resulted in disciplinary COVID19. referrals. The Annual Fire Safety Report Nathan Kemp, Director of Campus shows crime statistics for the most Safety, said that this increase, from 29 in recent full year. Since the report is 2018 to 46 in 2019, was disappointing released in December each year, the to see. None of the other crime statistics statistics shown are always for the listed showed such a dramatic increase year before, so the 2020 Report shows between the two years, but Kemp statistics for 2019. said that the increase may just be due Kemp has not yet been able to assess to more people feeling comfortable the statistics for 2020, but given that enough to report violations. the majority of campus was evacuated Associate Director of Campus Safety Daniel Robinson walks through campus with Senior Eleanor Phan in “I think some of it is just a matter of last March and did not return until November 2019. (Rob Nguyen/TKS) reporting,” Kemp said. “It’s a matter of September, Kemp hopes to see crime greater cooperation with, for example, across the board decrease. NEWS MOSAIC DISCOURSE NEWS MOSAIC DISCOURSE SPORTS Students returning to campus Virtual yoga with Kristina Hope Responding to county sheirf White supramacy in NHL PAGE 2 PAGE 5 PAGE 9 PAGE 11 2 NEWS The Knox Student | Februray 2, 2021 Administration confirms student arrival to campus Concerns of health discussed in decision to of students intended to come back to cam- return to campus. pus if it reopened, as BY CARLOS FLORES-GAYTAN guiding the school in Co-Editor-in-Chief determining the de- sires of the student On Thursday, Jan. 14, President Teresa Amott body. confirmed in an email to campus that Knox will be The testing and moving ahead with its plan to bring students back to quarantine process is campus in February. expected to look dif- “The remote instructional environment has al- ferent when students lowed us to keep moving forward while protecting return to campus. the health of the community during this stage of the Knox now has access pandemic,” Amott wrote. “At the same time, we know to saliva tests, which that a return to campus is necessary to provide the have the advantage of full range of human-powered, engaging experiences being easier to admin- that our students have come to expect from Knox ister than nasal tests College.” and having a quicker In its announcement, Knox expressed its belief turnaround time for the campus could responsibly reopen amid the cur- results. rent COVID conditions, citing the optimistic outlook Ehrlich described expressed by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritizer — who re- the process as being cently relaxed the Illinois region Knox County is in given a test tube and to Tier 1 mitigation rules. spitting into it, with Claire Palmer with Health Services prepares for COVID tests as students arrive to campus. (Rob Nguyen/TKS) As of this week, Knox County is reporting about the wait time for re- 25 new COVID cases a day. This is down from a peak sults being cut down K-12 will go first. of over 50 new cases a day in November, though still from days to as quickly as six hours. It is expected that most Knox students will have a higher than COVID cases in Knox County were at any The school believes these advantages will make long wait before they are eligible for the vaccine, but point prior to October.