By August Butler

Throughout my experience interviewing and exploring my way through the local disability community, both in Clarkston and Georgia State University, I’ve definitely picked up on some recurring themes. Many disabled people in these spheres are jonesing for the same alterations to our structure, typically centered around bias, inclusion, and recognition, both systemically and casually. To quote the girlboss Michelle Obama herself, “change happens one person at a time.” This is true for many issues disabled people are faced with— like a pebble tossed into a pond, it doesn’t take much to cause a ripple effect throughout the hordes of negligent or aggressive ignoramuses perpetuating this exclusionary buffoonery. Word of mouth and calling people out are both incredibly strong tools in limiting microaggressions and inaccurate perceptions. One person can easily be the seed for unstoppable growth.

Sometimes. The key addition to that claim is sometimes. The overwhelming Kaiju style archfoe of progress is inaccessibility, which is so beyond systemic it’s practically natural law. Physical inaccessibility is ingrained into our systems like glitter worked into a shag rug. It isn’t coming out until we’re down on the floor picking it out ourselves. 

Another key addition to the pebble pond scenario is “I guess,” because issues in the disability world are all connected. Inaccessibility and bias are intrinsically linked. A lack of inclusion and assimilation into everyday life causes inherent feelings of separation, and those feelings of separation encourage isolation and exclusion. It’s the chicken and the egg, around and around, and every time you try to grasp it, you end up with your eyes spinning in their sockets and your head banging itself into the wall.

I met Leah Soller at a project lab conference at Georgia State not long ago. She’d audited the lab I’m in now, the birthplace of DAMN, and was asked to help present on the extremely cool work we’re doing. After five minutes of meeting her, I’d been ranted at about inaccessibility for about four minutes and fifty seconds. (The first ten seconds were “hello.”) I immediately wanted to interview her. So, of course, I did.

“Hi, how are you, how’ve you been?” I asked, logging onto Zoom and settling in for a presumed two hours of ranting and rambling. My instincts are often dead on, and this was no exception. We’d pushed the meeting a few times as Leah was at a “disability meeting,” direct quote from our scheduling texts.

“I’ve been doing alright. Sorry about scheduling, last night I was in charge of the meeting, so that’s why I couldn’t just be like, see ya,” she said, throwing up a peace sign.

“The vague disability meeting?”

DREAM’s flyer

“Yeah, it was our first official DREAM meeting.” DREAM, or Disability Rights, Education, Activism, and Mentoring, is a student-led club with a division at Georgia State. According to their mission statement, they aim to “advance the interests of students with disabilities and their allies in higher education institutions across the United States,” including advancing self-advocacy, raising awareness surrounding culture and intersectional identity within the community, and encouraging “the study of disability within academia.”

“That’s big, we’ll definitely discuss it more,” I said, excited about DREAM’s mission and potential. “So, my first interview thing is asking about you, so just tell me a bit about yourself.”

“So, I’m a political science major, I’m a junior, I’m planning on going into law so I can do advocacy work for disabled people. I was in and out of school because of disability related health issues or the school system not being cooperative to the point where I didn’t graduate high school. Then I ended up getting my GED, going through Perimeter, and now I’m at [Georgia] State.”

The similarities between our academic progress were significant. “We’re going through the exact same process actually. I’m a step behind you,” I noted, reminiscing about my time in the hallowed halls of Atlanta Technical College, slaving away over used algebra textbooks in musty classrooms to get my GED. There’s definitely commonality between physical disabilities like Leah’s and mental disabilities like mine in many senses, especially the education system screwing us over. “Any hobbies or personal interests you want to add?”

“I’m an old lady. I like to cross stitch, I like to maintain my twenty gallon fish tank, and I like to read,” she said, over the sound of me laughing on the other line.

“Are you a fish person?”

“Yeah,” she said, laughing back.

“What’s the best fish?” I asked, as vaguely as possible.

“This is really basic, but I like bettas. Specifically koi bettas… I have a betta right now in a community tank with tetras and shrimp and snails and stuff.”

“That’s so incredibly dorky and I plan to embarrass you with it in the article,” I said, and am now making good on my promise. “But also same. I had a betta named Dwight, he lived forever, like five years,” I added. “Anyway, getting onto the subject— what is your personal history with disability?”

“So, I have cerebral palsy. In terms of how disability has affected me in school, in second grade I had major surgery where I was in a wheelchair for a full year. The school was very difficult to deal with and my mom was struggling to get me an aid… they also didn’t want to get a handicap school bus. They said it was gonna take months… yeah,” she said, seeing the slightly horrified but mostly irritated look on my face.

“That feels illegal.”

“Well, my parents were like, we could either sue the school or we could homeschool her. So I was homeschooled until sixth grade, and then I went back… I was in and out. The only full years of school I had were kindergarten, first grade, freshman year, and senior year.”

“Yeah, I’ve found that schools, especially middle and high schools, tend to be incredibly non-accomodating,” I said, speaking from personal experience with chronic illness, neurological disability, and long leaves of absence. “I thought it would be better at private school… but nope.”

“I would expect private schools would almost be worse, because they may not have as many regulations that they have to follow.”

That’s true. The IDEA or Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is a law stating that public schools must fund and provide education for disabled students. It’s protected under Section 504, the civil rights act famous in the disability community. 504 applies to private schools as well— but only as an anti-discriminatory law. 504 “does not require that private schools make major modifications to their programs, or provide Individualized Education Programs. Only certain parts of Section 504 apply to private schools, and in many cases, religious schools have even fewer obligations” (Joseph). Though inclusion is generally protected, the law also doesn’t apply if providing services and accommodations would “give rise to an undue financial or administrative burden” (ADA National Network), which is likely the excuse that Leah’s school used. It all has to do with what funding the schools accept and it’s often hard for families to get information about what accommodations are available to them. 

“Yeah, exactly. They don’t have all those standard state protocols, they can just kinda do what they want,” I agreed. “So, you got your GED, then you started at Perimeter.”

“Yeah… I’m very much a person that doesn’t tell people when I’m doing things until they’re done. Like, I had surgery and decided in the last two or three weeks while I was in a cast, ‘what’s the next productive thing I can do with my life? Oh, I can get my GED,’ So I went and scheduled all the tests and went, did all the tests by myself without telling anybody, while I was hobbling in a cast. The tests are at colleges, and I had one of those granny walkers cause I can’t use the under-the-arm crutches, and I was hopping all through campus. And my cast was on my right foot, so people would see me get out of my car after I’d just driven there, and they’d go ‘oh no.’ But I drive with my left foot.”

“How?” I asked, more enthralled than inquisitive. I did the same thing.

“I have a second gas pedal.”

“Oh, I see,” I laughed. “For some reason my brain was picturing you sitting with one leg crossed over the other, left foot on the gas, going like eighty down the highway.”

“That’s the thing, that’s what most people probably imagined when I got out of the car,” she laughed. “So yeah, I got my GED in late November. I thought it was probably too late for me to sign up for college for spring semester, and I looked it up out of curiosity, and it was like ‘no! Deadline is in two days.’”

“Oh my god…” I said, grinning mostly in awe, but partially in intimidation.

“So I just did it, I kind of just fall into things.”

“What was it like to start at GSU?”

Leah let out a sigh that let me know I was in for some information that would piss me off. “So, my first day of school, first day of college, I walk in and the elevator is broken. So I had to walk up the stairs to get to class. Because I can walk, I was able to get to class, but I couldn’t imagine being a full-time wheelchair user, going to school for the first time and seeing that, and just being like, ‘what the fuck.’”

“Yeah, like ‘I jumped through these hoops all my life, and I finally got here, and there’s just another barrier.’ That’s exhausting,” I said, recalling similar barriers in a neurological sense. For example, dropping out of high school due to lack of understanding on my part and lack of clarification on the faculty’s, then being met with what is possibly the worst portal design ever at Perimeter.

“Yeah. I kind of kept my head down throughout my Perimeter experience.”

“Me too, definitely.”

“But this last Spring, I fell on Dunwoody campus, scraped up my hand, and couldn’t find a first aid kit. I was like ‘oh crap,’ my hand was all scraped up, I was dripping blood… I went to class to put my stuff down, and my professor went to go find something. He was running around campus for fifteen minutes, could not find a first aid kit. Because on Perimeter campuses, most of the health clinics are closed at least half of the time, if not completely closed in their entirety. Perimeter campuses don’t have consistent access to any first aid.”

I’d noticed this as well. I often get migraines on campus or almost faint due to nervous system issues, and there’s nowhere to go for help. Just now, upon scouring the Georgia State Perimeter website for about thirty minutes, I found no information about on-campus health clinics. No maps to their locations, no schedules on when they’re open, no contacts to reach out to. Nothing. It shouldn’t be a difficult task for a student to find basic first aid.

“So I started emailing around being like, ‘hey, this is a problem,’” Leah continued. “I got in touch with Dr. Crowther,” the professor behind the project lab which fosters DAMN, along with many other ongoing projects to advance disability advocacy in the Georgia State community, “and I got involved with the accessibility map project that I worked on over the semester and into the Summer. Then I went downtown for the Fall.”

“How is downtown, is it any different?”

GSU campus map showing Aderhold and the T deck

“It’s worse,” she sighed, which made me laugh, more out of exhausted hilarity than genuine humor. “I have three classes in Aderhold,” a building on Georgia State’s downtown campus, “and before I started the semester I needed to schedule classes and figure out how to navigate the campus. Aderhold is a half-mile away from the rest of campus, and I was like, ‘crap. That’s too far away for me to be walking with any regularity.’ I ended up calling accommodations and trying to figure out how I can figure things out, and accommodations took two months to tell me if the bus route is accessible by wheelchair. They said that it was, but it isn’t, really. I’ve talked to wheelchair users that struggle with the buses and the bus drivers are apparently difficult to work with in terms of using the lifts. Accommodations aren’t very helpful, they just kind of sent me in circles in terms of figuring out parking. When school started that first week, I had a mental breakdown… I didn’t know there was a handicap lot,” the on-campus U lot, “so I found it, tried parking, and they told me I didn’t have the right pass… I needed a semester pass, but there’s no semester pass for the accessible lot… I was like, ‘I’m not going to pay individually every day, and I think I’m gonna have to park in the nearest deck to Aderhold,” which is the T Deck. “So I was parking at the U lot, then halfway through the day I’d drive and park at the T Deck. Which is a little over a quarter mile away from Aderhold, which is kind of better. But I had to fight them to get a semester pass to park in both decks. I went back and forth with them,” Leah explained, detailing the flakiness of accommodations and the faculty in getting her the passes she needed, and how they often didn’t work when she got them. “I called the number on the parking deck, and I was like ‘I’m handicap, I need to park here while I figure out what’s wrong with my pass.’ they were like, ‘we can’t let you park here.’” She explained that she got turned around and upon asking a pop-up tent for directions, “they gave me directions, but it wasn’t the accessible route.”

“I’m just listening to this and I’m like, breathing heavy. It’s so infuriating!”

“Yeah! Throughout the semester I’ve had issues.” There are some accommodations on campus that work, like requesting that classes are moved to more accessible rooms, but most are worthless or simply non-existent. “There are so many locations on campus that I didn’t even know were accessible. Like, a lot of accessible doors look like loading dock areas.”

“So they have accessible routes, they’re few and far between, they don’t advertise them, they’re difficult to get to, and if you want to use them consistently like with a semester pass, the process of getting that access is unbelievably convoluted,” I said, summarizing.

“Yeah. I learned this at the [DREAM] meeting last night, but with parking decks, disabled people are being told different things.”

“What?” I asked, trying not to yell and utterly failing.

“We’re all being told different things about whether or not we can have the pass or what sort of pass we can have. The parking for disabled people is complicated and not streamlined… they’re just problem solving.”

“It’d be so much easier to have one overarching system than just put individual band-aids on a bunch of tiny problems.”

“Yeah. There’s no way for disabled students to find out information about parking. They have to manage the parking and transportation system individually and the information is not consistent.”

“I feel like that’s partially because there’s no single system of accommodations, but also because GSU as a whole institution tends to have terrible communication between the faculty and between the students. Academically, too,” I said, speaking from my personal experience with the registrar and advisors. “They’re bad about keeping everybody updated on anything ever. Are there any other individual examples of barriers in accessibility that you want to mention?”

GSU campus map showing Langdale and the U lot

“So, the U Lot is under a building, Langdale Hall. There are two doors that lead into Langdale from the lot. One of them is stairs, the other is a ramp. The automatic door opener for the ramp is broken. It’s been broken for a while… I believe it’s been at least half the semester. Even if someone can open the door themself and get in, the ramp door is locked about forty percent of the time. As well as the CATLAB, which has the printers and sewing machines, all this stuff that we as students pay for… there are steps to get in, there is only a wheelchair lift… that hasn’t been updated since 1993, and only a couple people know how to use it. There’s no warning, there’s no access to help.”

“And because there isn’t an official accessibility map in place for downtown campus, there’s no indication. You just have to figure it out, you have to hope your classes are in buildings you can get into.”

Fig 1, the Oglethorpe accessibility map

Lack of accessibility maps is a huge problem at Georgia State. Accessibility maps are designed to show accessible routes, parking, and entrances for disabled students for easier navigation. Without one, disabled students are completely flying blind. For example, this image (fig 1) is the accessibility parking map from Oglethorpe, another university in Georgia. It’s detailed, clear, and easy to understand. Georgia State has nothing of the sort.

“And it’s hard in the classrooms… I have bad vision, so I tend to sit toward the front of the class. But in auditoriums, the only handicap seating is the back row. And at the time, I didn’t know I could request to move classrooms.”

“Yeah, because nobody fucking told you.”

“Exactly. And I know someone whose accommodations person hasn’t let her move classrooms. I don’t know why.”

“I think the part that’s the most annoying is that there’s never anybody who can directly assist us without us taking so much initiative. Like, there are a lot of people that are disabled that don’t know how to work the system or have neurological disabilities that make it difficult for them to communicate.” It’s the institution’s job to assist disabled students, not the other way around.

“That’s what I’m hoping DREAM can become. I’m twenty-five, I didn’t start going to school until I was about twenty, so I’ve been in school for a long time. I know how to advocate for myself. A lot of disabled students that are coming in freshly eighteen have never had to advocate for themselves, because their parents did, or the schools managed it, whatever the reason. So there needs to be a system in place… you know the sororities that have like, big sister little sister mentors? There needs to be something in place where disabled new students can go ‘I don’t know how to get around, I want somebody to show me around campus, show me where all the accessible routes are, what’s the quickest way to get around, what routes are flattest…’ they need to be able to figure out how to get accommodations, too. I’m hoping [DREAM] can become a resource for disabled students to problem solve. Then, if you can’t solve it, it can be taken to administration. It’s frustrating that there isn’t something already established on campus.”

“And there should be someone in the faculty that specializes in accommodations who can help students in the way we need, but there isn’t. So the next best thing is students helping other students.”

“[DREAM] is in its infancy stages, but yes, that’s what I would like it to be… just having older people who’ve been in college to help. Access and accommodations, in their work, has implied that if you can get to the classroom, there are accommodations, but you have to get there yourself. And there is stuff that access and accommodations does… but it’s all geared toward mental health. Which is good, but completely leaves out people who have physical disabilities.”

“And it’s also not that good. I started at Perimeter when I was sixteen, I’m super autistic, and I would have loved some guidance. But nothing.”

“Are you registered with accommodations?”

“No, because I didn’t know how to register. I was sixteen, I hadn’t been to school in like two years,” I explained. I had a similar academic pathway to Leah’s and didn’t even get my diagnosis until I had long dropped out of high school. I had no experience in dealing with accommodations. “I also didn’t know that I could use accommodations. I’ve always just fended for myself, I’m ASD 1 so I figured I was ‘normal enough’ to not need them,” I explained, a terribly misguided but understandable belief from years of compensating and masking. “But they would have helped so much. It should be part of the orientation process… they should give you the exact steps on how to register. The assumption that most students are ‘normal enough’ to not need help is actively hurting the students.”

“Yeah, exactly. Accommodations are technically there to help, but in my opinion, they’re more there to make sure GSU doesn’t get sued.”

“Totally. And it’s difficult to get what you need. Like, the accommodations I’d need as an autistic person are very different from the ones that someone who’s, like, nonverbal would need. Disability is so diverse within individual diagnoses and identities. Academic accommodations are impersonal and so objective.”

“That’s why I think that creating a group where you’re able to problem solve would help. Like, if someone is having a problem, going to that group and asking if anyone else has had that problem and what they did. And brainstorming for solutions.”

“Was DREAM already a thing before you took it on?” I asked, knowing that the organization has had a life before GSU.

“I’m not sure about the prior history… I think it was just starting up when Covid happened, then it kind of died.”

“Makes sense. What are some of the goals of DREAM other than providing, like, sherpa guidance?”

“Well, at the meeting last night we kind of had a mass complaint session… but we also want to plan events so disabled people can get together and know people like them exist on campus. We want to create a community, create networks.”

“That’ll be nice too based on what you described, like the band-aid temporary problem solving thing, people having to hack individual issues with little to no assistance,” I agreed. “If you bring all of these people together who have information based on their respective experiences and combine it, you might have some sort of a system. Not officially, but a base for help. What are the steps that DREAM, or you, or any disability community at GSU are looking into to make progress in accessibility?”

“To me, an accessibility map would be a good first step to let disabled people on campus know what issues exist here. Disabled people don’t know what they’re getting into at Georgia State.”

“It would help with housing and transportation too.”

“Yeah. A map would help disabled people not stumble onto every problem individually, but instead help the school let the students know where the problems lie. The school has said that they can’t fix the accessibility issues that lie outside of school buildings… like bad sidewalks, because they don’t own the sidewalk. Which, okay, but that doesn’t mean they can’t let students know that problems exist. It’s so helpful for disabled students to have prior knowledge of accessibility issues. So if we need to figure out an alternative, we have the wherewithal to prepare for it, instead of just stumbling upon every problem ourselves.”

“There’s a lack of assistance and a lack of warning. It’s like, ‘figure it out yourself, but we’re not even going to give you a basis on what you need to figure out,’” I griped. “Also, that excuse is kinda bullshit too. GSU has pull. They’re a state institution and they take up so much real estate in the downtown area, they could go to government maintenance and encourage them to do something. They have more power than an individual student would by such a huge margin, and yet.”

“Yeah. I’ve decided to focus my efforts on the accessibility map, because I feel like it’s a manageable first step that would make things so much easier and wouldn’t be a huge burden on Georgia State.” That’s true, they wouldn’t be able to use the “undue financial or administrative burden” excuse, especially because students in our project lab are doing most of the work. But that work is only for Perimeter campuses, not for downtown campus, which is the head honcho of disabled nightmares.

“And that’s why you joined the project lab… you audited it, right?”

“Yeah, I started going to [Dr. Crowther’s] class in the Spring because I got in contact with her after I fell. I wanted to get involved.”

“Do they have an accessibility map in progress downtown too?”

“Nope. We did a presentation to Dr. Sansivero,” the “associate vice president and dean of students at Georgia State University” according to the GSU website, “about the survey of Alpharetta campus,” Leah explained. “The project lab thinks it’s easier to take on Perimeter campuses instead of the downtown campus, which is understandable, but the downtown campus is the one that really needs it.”

“Yeah, because it’s spread out across the city, so there are a lot more places for inaccessibility. Perimeter campuses are super small… especially on the Clarkston campus, all of the buildings are on the ground. There are issues getting to higher floors, but I’m pretty sure there are ramps going into every building, and all the automatic door openers I’ve seen have worked.”

“I actually did a survey on Clarkston with the accessibility map group, and a lot of buildings have multiple sets of doors. The second set does not have automatic doors.”

“And the elevator is behind the second set of doors.”

“Yup. And the ramp in lot three is literally just asphalt piled by the curb. It’s not usable. I parked in lot three to do the survey, and I was literally in my wheelchair trying to get up, and I couldn’t.”

“That feels appropriate,” I said, wryly.

“Yeah. That’s why I’m working on the disability map, then I’m working on DREAM to create a community of disabled people on campus. And that’s what’s frustrating as a disabled student, there are so many different issues that you see every single day. Cracked sidewalks, broken door openers, ramps… but you can only take so many things into consideration in terms of actively trying to fix them before you get overwhelmed. So I’ve decided to focus my efforts on those two things.”

“Those are great building blocks for future progress. Creating a community will get more people involved, and the map will help all around. It’ll also provide proof to take to faculty and say, ‘hey, this is the problem, these are the problem spots.’ I do think there’s a little ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’ in this though,” I said, quoting the famous SABE (Self-Advocates Becoming Empowered) slogan which stands for self-determination and representation in institutions of all varieties, literal and social, for the disabled community. “There needs to be a disabled person running the accommodations department at GSU. The difference between the way a physically disabled person versus a non-disabled person would view a structure is huge.”

“That’s why I went to look around Clarkston with the map group. I used the wheelchair on the ramp… in theory, there’s no step up, which means it’s technically a ramp. But it is not a ramp. It’s a pile of asphalt by the curb. There are regulations around how steep the grade is with a ramp, and there’s no way it meets them.” For ramp grade regulations, “the commercial and public facility standard for slope is 1:12 (in inches) or about 5 degrees of incline” (BraunAbility). Though the ramp likely doesn’t meet those regulations, it doesn’t even matter. It’s literally a pile of asphalt. It’s unusable.

“And there hasn’t been any reaching out to GSU higher-ups?”

“So, the president of DREAM was able to meet President Blake,” the head of Georgia State, “during the safety meeting after the on-campus shooting.” 

In a recent Instagram post from Georgia State, they wrote “Thank you to the more than 1,000 GSU community members who joined us in person and online for our Safety and Operations Town Hall yesterday. We heard great feedback, and we’re committed to keeping you updated on all our efforts to continue to enhance our campus experience.” A comment on the post from user “zofromorocco” that quickly became a personal favorite out of all comments ever said “Wonderful meeting that didn’t do anything because we managed to have another shooting on campus today.” That says a lot about effort and awareness.

“Over two weeks ago,” Leah continued, “the DREAM president sent a list of things that were wrong with GSU campus. There’s been no response.”

“Shit.”

“But to be fair, there’s no backing to a single student. We just had our first DREAM meeting yesterday… there were only ten people, we don’t have the numbers to lend weight to an argument. I tend to not attribute problems with malice if I can. There were so many other things that were going on, and there wasn’t an important name on the list.” Which, again, is fair. But nobody with any say at Georgia State is doing anything. This should not be our job. Leah is very good at being patient and giving people the benefit of the doubt, two qualities I envy and respect. They’re also qualities I don’t have.

The Georgia State faculty needs to do something about this.

“When you start your advocate work, please come back to GSU and vouch for us,” I laughed.

Leah laughed back, though not without an exhausted sigh. “I’m really going to school to learn how to advocate for myself. There have been instances in my life where using the law on my behalf had to be the solution. So that’s something I want to get into so I can help advocate for other disabled people. What’s frustrating to me is that I’m trying to go to school to learn how to advocate, but in order to go to school, I have to advocate.”

“Learning the law regarding disability is so important and powerful,” I agreed. “Not a lot of disabled people know the laws that back them. Are there particular classes at GSU that discuss disability law?”

“The only class I’ve come across that discusses disability is the class that you’re taking,” she said, shout-out to Dr. Crowther. “In theory, there’s another one in the religion department, but I haven’t looked into it. Plus, I have an internship at the capitol next semester, so I won’t take classes.” Every time I’ve heard Leah mention her capitol internship, I’ve felt an unfounded sense of pride. Somebody needs to do something about this, and I’m glad that person is Leah, or someone like her. Someone who understands what it’s like to be screwed over by institutions larger than themself and who’s sick of putting up with mistreatment.

“I do want to ask before we wrap up, not to pander, is there anything in particular that readers of this article can do to help encourage awareness about inaccessibility?” I asked.

“Oof.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m having a hard time finding ways that I can help. Really, just being aware, and noticing accessibility issues— like the lime scooters that block the fucking sidewalks all the time!”

The goddamn lime scooters

“Don’t even get me started on the lime scooters, we could do a whole other article on just the fucking lime scooters,” I laughed.

“It’s so bad!”

“It’s so bad.”

“Anyway, yeah, just be aware. Notice when things come up, don’t ignore issues. Keep an eye out for information and listen for ways you can help. I’ve had discussions with so many people about this, and every single time, they go ‘I didn’t know it was this bad.’ So have the awareness that it really is a struggle for us. Disabled people can live perfectly independent lives, the thing that’s hardest for us is the inaccessibility of the school.”

“Every interview I do always comes back to the social model. Every time. The consensus is just social model and listen. Listen to disabled people.”

“Exactly.”

Disabled people are capable of living independently. But we’re sick of having to go through life like a battle, especially in academic settings, which are supposed to encourage and inspire students, not create new sources of frustration and isolation. The constant struggle of trying to shove down barriers is actively stripping us of our independence. Independence is living life without strings attached, without having to choose between groveling for help or fighting relentlessly and often fruitlessly. Independence is equal opportunity, and if there are any complications for disabled people in any system, that system is not equal. The bare minimum should no longer be acceptable. Disabled people should no longer have to scratch and claw our way into spaces that we belong in.

 

Access DREAM’s pin account here- https://pin.gsu.edu/organization/dream

 

References:

“Accessibility Parking Map – Campus Safety.” Campus Safety, https://safety.oglethorpe.edu/parking/accessibility-parking-map/. Accessed 12 December 2023.

ADA National Network. “What are a public or private college-university’s responsibilities to students with disabilities?” ADA National Network, https://adata.org/faq/what-are-public-or-private-college-universitys-responsibilities-students-disabilities. Accessed 12 December 2023.

“CATLAB – Creation and Technology Labs | GSU Technology.” GSU Technology, https://technology.gsu.edu/technology-services/technology-labs-printing/catlab/. Accessed 12 December 2023.

Joseph, Nicole, and Nicole A. Joseph. “Private Schools Required to Provide Accommodations?” Attorney Nicole Joseph, with Nicole Joseph Law, 17 February 2023, https://nicolejosephlaw.com/are-private-schools-required-to-provide-accommodations-section-504-plan/. Accessed 12 December 2023.

“Lime (transportation company).” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_%28transportation_company%29. Accessed 12 December 2023.

Obama, Michelle. “Quote by Michelle Obama: “Change happens one person at a time.”” Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11031006-change-happens-one-person-at-a-time. Accessed 12 December 2023.

“Michael Sanseviro Appointed Vice President For Student Engagement And Programs At Georgia State.” Georgia State University, 6 July 2021, https://news.gsu.edu/2021/07/06/michael-sanseviro-appointed-vice-president-for-student-engagement-and-programs-at-georgia-state/. Accessed 12 December 2023.

Map images sourced from the GSU website: https://www.gsu.edu/

(Hilarious) cover art by August Butler