• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Disability and Accessibility Town Hall Disability and Accessibility Town Hall By Steve Yang [email protected] Two years ago, President Kington tasked a group of faculty, administrators and students with developing a “comprehensive response to serving students, faculty and staff with disabilities.” The efforts were motivated by regulatory compliance concerns and a push to adopt universal design principles that reflect and represent the College’s core values. On Thursday morning, these findings were summarized and discussed at a town hall in JRC 101, dedicated to informing the campus-wide Grinnell community. The Disability and Accessibility Task Force is chaired by Angela Voos, vice president for strategic planning and Joyce Stern, dean for student success and academic advising. They collaborated with Autumn Wilke, coordinator of disability resources and over 50 other individuals across six subcommittees to raise awareness, discuss accommodations and develop numerous forms of access for disabilities at Grinnell. The Task Force emphasized accommodating “invisible” disabilities and implementing universal design concepts, specifically in the College’s new social studies building under construction, the Digital Humanities Lab and Campus Safety. “Disability is a giant umbrella that covers a lot of different identities, a lot of different people,” Wilke said during the Town Hall. “Many things are related to mental health and many physical disabilities such as chronic fatigue … are invisible. Advancements in accessibility … are also having great benefit for people with invisible disabilities.” A major issue is the perception of what disabilities look like or how most people envision “disability” and the specific accommodations that must be provided. Joyce Stern focused on “invisible” illnesses during Thursday’s Town Hall in JRC 101. Photo by Xiaoxuan Yang. “Disabilities don’t always look like what we expect to them to look like and we can’t judge what it is and is not accessible for others,” wrote Emily Howe ’17, who is actively involved with the disability community on campus, in an email to The S&B. Some forms of compliance are necessary to meet legal standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which governs the minimum requirements Grinnell must meet. For example, professors must begin providing course syllabi much earlier in the semester, areas of refuge that meet certain accessibility requirements must be established and faculty/staff offices on campus should be accessible to those with wheelchairs and service animals. “Knowledge and action about accessibility and inclusion and are the most important aspects of disability at Grinnell,” Howe explained. “Oftentimes Grinnellians, including professors and administrators, just don’t think about where their events are being held or how they’re designing their Powerpoints.” The way that syllabi and assistive technologies are implemented, particularly with educational programming, can significantly impact the way that students with disabilities are able to participate in class, Stern explained. “More than providing accommodations, accessibility and individualized experiences must be available from the get-go, so that one day it … just feels normal,” Stern said. “Everyone wants to … fully participate, without a modification for their benefit. If those things aren’t in place, we need to make sure that those accommodations are made.” As such, the Task Force is eager to reframe disability and accessibility issues on campus as issues of difference, rather than of lacking. “We start thinking about this more as a diversity issue and not as a disability issue and an accommodation issue,” Wilke said. Notable accomplishments were described, such as increased training and education for faculty, a renovation of the classroom technology catalog and making assistive listening devices more readily available. Task Force members highlighted NetNutrition, which makes allergy information easier to access and the efforts that campus members have made in being more conscious of disability accommodations. Audience members praised the prevalence of service animals, less stigma surrounding fidget toys or “tinker toys” and ramp access at Bob’s Underground Cafe. However, gaps in awareness are still persistent. Students are often careless with leaving their backpacks in walkways or their bikes on sidewalks, which impedes accessibility. Encouraging students to be proactive rather than reactive, Howe suggested that student leaders must be instrumental in changing campus perceptions and Stern noted that it takes a campus to go all in on this effort. “This form of inclusion is everyone’s responsibility,” Stern said. “For example, ‘Open to all students’ may not actually be open to all students. What can we do to change that?” Warren Buffett hosts students in Nebraska By Carter Howe [email protected] Twenty Grinnell students travelled to Omaha on Nov. 18 to meet Warren Buffett, who has been dubbed the “Oracle of Omaha” and has previously served on Grinnell’s Board of Trustees. During the Center for Career, Life and Services (CLS) trip, students talked with Buffett about financial investment and professional success. Grinnell was part of a group of eight academic institutions, including Yale and Columbia’s business schools, that attended. The 20 Grinnell attendees were the only undergraduates present. Berkshire Hathaway, the Buffett-owned company that hosted the event, required that one-third of attendees be women in order to promote equality in the traditionally male-dominated field of finance. According to Mark Peltz, Dean of the CLS, there was no shortage of applications from women. During a question and answer session, the Grinnellians had the opportunity to ask Buffett about his longtime friendship with Joe Rosenfield, the Grinnell alumnus known for his generosity and dedication to the College and the namesake of the JRC. Buffett served as a trustee of the College because of his friendship with Rosenfield. Buffett’s special relationship with Grinnell is rooted in his longtime friendship with Joe Fosenfield ’25. Photo Contributed. Participant Gargi Magar ’17 said that Buffett was very kind and offered valuable life advice. “Someone asked ‘What’s the most important thing you need to succeed?’ and he said ‘Unconditional love is the greatest force in the world.’ I don’t think anyone was expecting that answer because that just seems very Dumbledore,” Magar said. Philip Kiely ’19, who also attended the trip, said he was surprised by Buffett’s humble demeanor. “I was expecting that he’d walk in and there’d be a big whooshing sound because all the air just rushed out of the room, but no. … He was very professorly. It just sort of seemed like he was a visiting professor from another school that you should be respectful to, but no one to be afraid of,” Kiely said. Peltz emphasized that the CLS is committed to providing opportunities for students to explore many careers, not just finance. “This is certainly a transformational experience for the students who are able to participate and what CLS is really interested in doing is identifying other ways that we can provide similar transformational experiences in other areas of the world of work, not just investment,” Peltz said. Although Peltz is not sure whether Grinnellians will get to visit Buffett again, he says he would certainly organize another trip if possible. “It’s an opportunity that I hope we have again. … I mean Grinnell, was at a table 15 feet away from Warren Buffett. There are shareholders for Berkshire Hathaway that never get to shake Warren Buffett’s hand. We did.” Cakarmis ’17 goes to COP22 Earlier this month, the international community gathered in Marrakesh, Morocco, for COP22 — a climate change conference following up on the agreement reached one year ago at COP21 in Paris. Grinnell’s own Tea Cakarmis ’17, who previously worked with the UN agency on Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) was invited by UNESCO and the nation of Palau to participate in the conference. This week, The S&B’s Michael Cummings sat down with Cakarmis to discuss her experience in Marrakesh and the future of climate change policy. The S&B: What is COP22 and how does it relate to COP21? Tea Cakarmis: COP22 was intended to be an explanation of how the implementation of COP21 will take place. COP21 in a lot of ways is an ideological promise, we’ve agreed that climate change is human-caused, that it is something where the science is very conclusive and also something that we need to act on. However, the way you go about it has consistently throughout the COPs been where a deal breaks or makes. In Marrakesh they were discussing how to actually put COP21 into action. The S&B: How did you end up going to Marrakesh this year? TC: I was [working] with UNESCO and I was working with the delegation of Palau. Since day one of my internship, the Paris Agreements were just signed. I started working in February, so it was really, really fresh. The agreement is indisputably one of the biggest accomplishments that have been done since the forming of the UN framework on climate change, [but] the small island states still did not feel as if it was reflective of how alarming the situation is. We talk about 2 degrees Celsius and small island states formed their own sort of aspirational alliance for 1.5 degrees because that’s really the only thing that they find could even maybe possibly be satisfying. So we started working on how we could represent them, creatively, outside just the actual official delegations in Marrakesh. Then we came up with a project and when my internship ended they were like, “Oh, how about you join us in Marrakesh?” I didn’t really think that that was even possible, and it was in the middle of my school year and everything, but then it just sort of worked out. It was amazing. Tea Cakarmis ’17 represented Palau at COP22 in Marrakesh, Morocco.

Load more

  49

Copy Link