Antonia De Michiel
I wanted to circle back to what a little bit of what Spencer was alluding to, about how the field has shifted, right. And in my work, I really center my own role as a disabled scholar, practitioner, and so part of how I’m framing this question is really rooted in my own experiences in undergrad, right? When I was in undergrad, I had a very limited perception of who was accessing the disability services office, who qualified for services, right? And that that had to do more with my own perception of my disability identity development. But I really want to highlight that disability is not a monolith Exactly. There’s a more expansive understanding of disability now as being multifaceted. Right when I was in undergrad, a little bit more than 10 years ago, it was mainly students like myself with mobility related disabilities, hearing impairments, deaf students, maybe some students with ADHD that were accessing the disability services office, and if you had a diagnosis of anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder that you felt like was impacting your academic functioning, perhaps you were accessing the disability services Office, but back then, you certainly weren’t talking about it, sure.

Raechele Pope
Welcome to Student Affairs NOW, the online learning community for Student Affairs educators. I’m your host, Raechele Pope, with this episode, we’re celebrating two major milestones in higher education, the 25th anniversary of the ACPA Coalition for disability and the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. We’re joined by a panel of passionate advocates and leaders in the field, Erin Mayo, Kat Hurley, Antonia De Michiel, Mike Kutnak and Spencer Scruggs , and they’re here to reflect on how far we’ve come and where we go next in advancing disability justice in higher education, Student Affairs NOW is the premier Podcast at online learning community for 1000s of us who work in think about and support the field of student affairs. Our mission is to make student affairs more accessible by bringing timely, relevant conversations to higher education professionals in a way that’s informative, engaging and community centered. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays, and you can find out more details about this episode or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com Today’s episode is sponsored by Huron. Huron education and research experts help institutions transform their strategy, operations, technology and culture to foster innovative, financial, health and student success. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Raechele Pope. My pronouns are she and her and I professor in the higher education and student affairs program at the University at Buffalo. I’m recording today near the University of Buffalo’s campus in the unceded Land of the Haudenosaunee people. So let’s get to this conversation, folks, we are so glad to have you here. Please introduce yourselves and share a bit about yourself, your roles, your campus, and how you’re connected to the ACPA disability coalition, and how you enter the disability space in higher education. Mike, why don’t we start with you

Mike Kutnak
Sure my name is Dr. Mike Kutnak. I currently serve as the chair for the math and physics department at Queens University of Charlotte. I’m also Assistant Professor in the math department there. I am connected to the coalition. I was chair of the Standing Committee for disability from 2013 to 2015 and I have been involved with the Coalition for a long, long time now. And I entered the disability space in a couple of different ways. Prior to working here at Queens, I used to serve as ADA specialist and ADA access coordinator for employees at one large state institution. I have also served as the Director of Disability Services here for students at Queens in the past. In addition to that, I am a practitioner who identifies as having a disability, and I am also an ally for all of our students and our faculty and staff members who have disabilities. Thanks.

Raechele Pope
Thanks Mike. Spencer, you want to jump in

Spencer Scruggs
Sure. Hi everyone. My name is Spencer Scruggs. I use him his pronouns. I’m the director of the Center for Accessible Education at UCLA, I’ve been working in disability services for, excuse me, for over 10 years now. I got into this space through student affairs program or Student Affairs masters program, and did my. Uh, assistantship in the Student Disability Resource Center at Florida State University, and never looked back from there. So I love this space and and appreciate the opportunity to speak about it. And I also wanted to share I’m I’m coming to you all today from the unceded territory of the Gabrielino and Tongva peoples what was formerly known or what was what is known. Excuse me, as to vangar, great.

Raechele Pope
Thank you. Spencer, Erin, let’s learn about you.

Erin Mayo
Hi everyone. My name is Erin Mayo. I use she her pronouns. I serve as the Assistant Director of Student Accessibility Services at the College of the Holy Cross in Western Massachusetts. Our campus is on the traditional unceded territory of the Nipmuc people. And I also currently serve as the chair for the Coalition for disability. And got involved in ACPA in 2018 when Spencer brought me on board for the Directorate board, and I’ve been loving it ever since I come to this space as I have a learning disability that impacts my processing speed and my understanding of abstract language. Great.

Raechele Pope
Thank you. Erin, Kat, hello.

Kat Hurley
My name is Kat Hurley. I use she series pronouns. I am not in disability services directly. I am actually a Residential Life Coordinator for our non traditional student housing areas here at Cal State University Monterey Bay, which is located on the ancestral homeland of the Esalen Ohlone, Rumson and Celine and peoples I am also entering this space as a disabled practitioner myself and an ally and advocate for those students and practitioners around me, especially given my experiences as a late, diagnosed neurodivergent person who during my undergraduate experience, did not get the support or did not have the awareness that I did when I returned to school years later for my masters, which is also where I focused on researching how accommodations and disabilities can be supported in physical spaces on campuses like residential halls.

Raechele Pope
Great. Thanks, Kat. Welcome

Antonia De Michiel
Antonia. Hi everyone. I’m Antonia De Michiel. I use sheher pronouns. I currently serve as a disability advising manager in the office of Accessible Education at Stanford University. And I’m coming to you from the unceded territory of the Ohlone people. I’ve been working in disability services for about six years at a variety of institution types here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I entered this space also as a disabled practitioner, as someone who’s navigated disability services offices. My entire educational career, I came into this space, like many student affairs professionals by getting involved with student activism on campus and eventually finding my way into working in higher education.

Raechele Pope
Great. Thank you. What a wide range of experiences and opportunities and ways in which you you come to this area, and I am so thankful to sit in community with you today, to have this conversation. It’s a very broad area dealing with Disability Issues in Higher Education. So I’m thinking maybe one place to begin is to begin by grounding ourselves in ACPA, which is one thing that you all have in common. So maybe we can talk a bit about the history and the purpose of the ACPA Coalition for disability, and Mike and Spencer as past chairs of the coalition. Perhaps you can start us off here? Sure.

Mike Kutnak
So the Coalition for disability originally started off as the standing committee for disability back in the year 2000 so we have grown quite a bit since then, both in size and stature. I remember when I was chair and it was a standing committee. It literally consisted of just the two or three other people on the Directorate board with me. So now we not only have a fully functioning directorate board, but we have membership. We have lots of folks who are involved. So it’s really great to see that our coalition really consists of three different types of members. So the first is, if you are a practitioner who identifies as having a disability, we are at home for you. The second group of members are folks who work in Disability Services and who are service providers on campuses, either in academic units or in student affairs units. It’s and then our third group of folks that make up our coalition are allies, so friends, family, people who care about individuals with disabilities and furthering the causes of accessibility. So our coalition works hard to advance causes of access, universal design, disability awareness, disability identity and other relevant matters in higher education, we focus on advocating for both students and employees. So we also talk about faculty and staff who have disabilities and what their experience is working in higher education, either in student affairs or on the academic side of things. And we’re really excited this year because of two milestones that you mentioned previously. It is our 25th anniversary, and it is also the 35th anniversary of the passage of the original Americans with Disabilities Act. So we’re really excited to be able to celebrate both of those milestones at the same time.

Spencer Scruggs
Yeah, yeah. Mike, I was going to add, I think one really important note to to remember is, even if you go further back than the founding of the coalition, back in the days of, I think they were the commissions, what they can the Commission’s way back when, when the commissions were numbered, that is, there was a working group task force under the commission for Dean of Students senior level professionals in the field That was very specific to this, Disability Services practitioners, because the history at that time was often someone in the Dean of Students Office was tapped to manage 504, responsibilities for the institution. And so that’s often a little unknown factor, something that that fewer people don’t know. And so I always like to pepper that in. It’s our 25th anniversary. But disability has been in so many ways, integrated into ACPA as a as an association, it

Raechele Pope
absolutely has. I mean, I was, I think my experience with ACPA predates all of you and probably most of the people in the field at this point. And yes, I remember the commissions and the standing committees and all of the the and then the functional groups. There was the advocacy groups and the functional groups, and so this, yeah, I think that makes a whole lot of sense. So I’m wondering a little bit more about that there to get to where it is now, to get to these 25 years, and the kind of good work this coalition is doing. I’m wondering if there’s some moments or things that stand out to you from over the past two plus decades in terms of ACPA role, in terms of higher education responses?

Spencer Scruggs
Yeah, I, you know, I think, to me, of one of the the kind of most telling moments in the history of the coalition was its actual founding. And there’s some, some great folks who founded the coalition, and and and often, will share about this particular this particular story in that the founding of the coalition was very much rooted in individuals from other entities stepping up to advocate for the place of the coalition, and it came from other identity spaces. And so, you know, I think that that’s a really powerful story that we tell terms of you know, the the power of of you know, connecting across identity and connecting across shared experience to make space for others in that that’s needed. And so I it’s one of my favorite stories to tell about the coalition and I think it’s very telling of the history of the coalition as well. Mike, I don’t know if you have any thoughts about

Mike Kutnak
Yeah, you know for me, one of the one of the big moments, I would say, is transitioning from a standing committee to a coalition. I was around to shepherd us through that process, and it was very reaffirming to have ACPA say, No, we believe in what you do, and we want you to be permanent, and we want you to be one of the major identity groups that identifies within our organ. Organization. So to kind of create this space in an organization that is meant for all of Student Affairs, was a really special moment to be able to see that a lot of times people think about disability specific types of organizations and associations. So this was a really cool moment to be able to see no the larger profession is acknowledging us and saying we belong as part of them, right?

Raechele Pope
Yeah, and that really makes the issues, the concerns, the individuals, feel seen and known. They are seen and important and real contributors to what’s going on. And I think I can say that for all of the what we’re at the time, the identity based groups so, so that’s the grounding in the past. How would you describe the current landscape of disability and Student Affairs in Higher Education for both students and professionals, I want to swing both swing Antonia into the conversation as a starting place.

Antonia De Michiel
So I wanted to share some data, as you might as you may be aware, students with disabilities are not as widely studied within higher education compared to other marginalized groups. And so recent data from the National College engagement survey, the nesi reports that 21% of students identify with a disability within higher education. However, that 21% that 21% only represents the students that are choosing to self disclose. And the kind of nature of self disclosure in higher ed is a whole topic in and of itself, because when students are transitioning from the K 12 setting to the university setting, the whole paradigm for seeking support services is flipped upside down right. So in the K 12 setting, parents and guardians are often advocating for their student to receive disability related accommodations and other appropriate supports. However, in the college setting, on all of our campuses, a student has to self identify, and so that 21% is what we know right now, but that number is probably under reported, because even while I’m talking to you all right now, I can think of students that I’m aware of who I know have a disability, who choose, largely due to shame and stigma and other factors, to not self disclose, right and so but through that 21% there is an acknowledgement that these are the students that are choosing to self disclose, choosing to seek services, but we also have to be mindful of all of the students and faculty who are on Our campuses who choose not to disclose. And so

Raechele Pope
let me, let me ask you about that 21% for a second, I want to just be clear about the number. So there’s 21% who have self disclosed. Are they the same? 21% seeking services too? So that we have 21% of the students on campus who are seeking those services. But we know that the number is still hidden. Or is that the just the 21% who responded to Nessie Spencer?

Antonia De Michiel
Do you happen to know?

Spencer Scruggs
Yeah, so I think you know it varies from campus to campus. I know you know, the trend ever since, kind of the pandemic, and even, you know, I think some of this dates back to, really, 2014 2015 when the new, the new regulations for the the ADA amendments act, finally came out, and that sort of has spurred this move of many institutions towards different documentation standards, opening the types of disabilities that often campuses are providing support for, and whatnot. And so I think it depends on the institution in many cases, you know, some a lot of institutions are seeing around 20 to 21% of their student population registering with their office. Some institutions are a bit smaller, but I know from a lot of my colleagues in the field, I. Most are seeing increases of five to 10% over the past five to 10 ish years, since some of those things, kind of the regulations and the pandemic and things of that nature, really spurred that adjustment. So, so, yeah, I think it depends on the campus. I think also there are, you know, some campuses I think are going to see a larger percentage. And, you know, we know that from a little bit of research that disabled students are more likely to enroll in community college first. And again, not a monolith, but, but that’s sort of what some of the data tells us. And so community colleges are may be more likely than not to see higher enrollment or higher engagement with the Disability Resource office on that campus. And so I think, like whenever we look at data that shows the number of students that are identified as disabled, I think it’s also like that little asterisk that’s always there, I think is always really important, because it tells us, you know, that in some cases, that’s not going to necessarily reflect The number of students that are registered with the office for accommodations versus students that are disclosing that in a survey or in another instrument that the campus is using, sure.

Raechele Pope
And that was important for me when Antonia was saying that, because I think it underscored you saying, hey, those numbers are probably really underreported, and I wanted to make sure that what we were talking about, so that’s great, and totally you might say some more, yeah,

Antonia De Michiel
I wanted to circle back to what a little bit of what Spencer was alluding to, about how the field has shifted, right. And in my work, I really center my own role as a disabled scholar, practitioner, and so part of how I’m framing this question is really rooted in my own experiences in undergrad, right? When I was in undergrad, I had a very limited perception of who was accessing the disability services office, who qualified for services, right? And that that had to do more with my own perception of my disability identity development. But I really want to highlight that disability is not a monolith Exactly. There’s a more expansive understanding of disability now as being multifaceted. Right when I was in undergrad, a little bit more than 10 years ago, it was mainly students like myself with mobility related disabilities, hearing impairments, deaf students, maybe some students with ADHD that were accessing the disability services office, and if you had a diagnosis of anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder that you felt like was impacting your academic functioning, perhaps you were accessing the disability services Office, but back then, you certainly weren’t talking about it, sure. And our students now are talking about their neurodivergence. They’re talking about their mental health conditions and how their psychological disabilities are disabling to them, right? And that’s been a shift right to make the understanding of students with disabilities much more expansive and holistic, and so I just wanted to highlight you know, in that sense that many of our students and colleagues in the field and on Our campuses identify with non apparent disabilities. I myself also have some non apparent disabilities. However, they often get hidden because my physical disabilities are more salient, and so that’s the first thing that people see about me. And you know, there’s been this shift also within the field, from person first to identity first language. And what I mean by that is, if I were to introduce myself with person first language, it would be like, Hi. I’m Antonia de Michelle, and I have a neurological condition. But if I were to use identity first language my introduction would be like, Hi, I’m Antonia, and I identify as disabled, right? And people really reclaiming their disability as a core part of their identity. So those are just a few of the shifts that I’ve observed in the last. Five or so years that I’ve been working in this field, there’s a shift from compliance based models, which we’ll talk about in a moment, to really looking at equity and belonging for students with disabilities. Great.

Raechele Pope
Thank you. Antoni, what are some of the challenges that persist that deserve more attention, spending the same lands landscape? What are you thinking? I think Antonia just said that you were going to start with answering that one.

Spencer Scruggs
Spencer, yeah, yeah. And I, you know, so I think, you know. I mean, higher education is rife with the history of ableism and so, like many, like many constructs and and, you know, isms that we, that we kind of tackle, if you will, in in higher education, ableism is certainly one of those, even with the progress that we have made. And so, you know, I can think back to during the pandemic, there was a really great article I believe in Inside Higher Ed about,

Spencer Scruggs
I am totally going to blank on the specific labels that were given, but there was intellectual rigor, and then, like, something like procedural rigor, or really in this idea that in many ways, higher education has substituted this idea of procedural rigor or rigor for the sake of just being, you know, rigorous in Our processes, in our in what we expect of students and whatnot, versus intellectual rigor, which is true. You know, we want students to demonstrate that their meeting expectations and meeting expectations in meaningful ways and developing purpose and all of these different things through courses. So, you know, I think there that is certainly something that is still present in higher education, I think will continue to be present. And also, you know, I would say another kind of thing that is coming up is, you know, in many institutions, I think there is a desire, especially during the pandemic, you know, institutions were, you know, for years, made, you know, accurate assertions around, well, we can’t do, you know, we can’t turn on a dime. We can’t make, you know, adjustments to move to a more virtual format, or move to an online format, or do these things in these ways on a dime. And then we did it during the pandemic, admittedly, maybe not as well as we could have, but we did it. And so now I think institutions are grappling with this move back in person, this reassertion of assumptions and bias that we’ve had around what it means to be involved in a higher education community, especially when we look at employee Success and our employees in higher education and how the the assumption around you know in person work and in person, just everything in person, I think can get really, is something that is is coming back. And I think is something for us to note, particularly when we know that there are stories of success, when we have had the flexibility to offer individuals show up, how, how you can in a space and do the work that you need to do in that way. So, yeah, I I think that those are kind of two things that are coming to mind for me, sure.

Raechele Pope
Yeah, I think it all does challenge our assumptions about what we can do and what we can’t do, and how we can respond to requests to to adapt a campus or an environment to the needs of some and I think we can do a better job than we’ve been doing. And as I’ve said, in numerous situations, covid exposed the lie. You know, people kept saying to us that we’re going to have to all this change takes time. We can’t do it. It has to be these incremental ways. And in covid, in some ways, we did it in two weeks. And so that’s that’s important for us to know. So let’s, let’s go in that direction. How are campuses or practitioners, individuals successfully challenging ableism? Um. So on campus, what are some of the things that have that have been done that have successfully challenged how we respond? I’m wondering who might feel that they can respond to that.

Mike Kutnak
So I can talk about some things that I’ve seen happen from an employment side of things for sure. You know, Spencer brings up a good point, that the law requires us to pay attention to what we do for our students, but it also requires us to pay attention what we do for our employees too, right? And so one of the things that I’ve seen happening in the last 10 years or so that challenges ableism is just who can work where and when and how the pandemic did lift the lid on a lot of things that we maybe thought were either not possible, technically or not possible culturally, given the environment of our offices and our workspaces and the the idea that things needed to be in person. So I think one of the ways that I’ve seen that change quite a bit is just the amount of workplace accommodations that I have seen granted for folks working in student affairs, for faculty members, for rank and file staff members across campus. I would also say that that is an area of growth. It is not the area that we paid attention to first. We paid attention to our students first. So we have a little bit of catching up to do in that area, but I think that we are starting to make some really great strides there, and we are starting to apply some of those same concepts that I’m asked to employ in the classroom, in the faculty meeting now, and in the boardroom for the Board of Visitors and those kinds of things. So I think that that is a that’s a great way for us to challenge ableism in a different kind of way, right?

Raechele Pope
Does anyone else have other ways in which we are successfully challenging ableism?

Kat Hurley
Excuse me, I’m battling a coughing fit. Yeah, so also, please excuse the cough drop that I am now dependent on, I think, also, something that has been helping challenge some of that ableism is as we realize that the onus is not exclusively on disability services and human resources. So all of us as practitioners and in the Working Spaces, as supervisors, colleagues, peers, like we all are able to and potentially have a responsibility to, depending on the relationship, provide that access support to the individuals around us that are disabled and need accommodations or things like that. And there’s also a gray area. You know, Mike talked about the ways we’ve been able to support employees and the ways we are required to support to support employees, rightfully so. And a lot of us don’t pay attention to the gap of who is left out between our students and our employees. And that is something that especially those of us in housing spaces like myself, we have a lot of experience with many campuses have a residential advisors that are classified technically as volunteers, because they are perhaps compensated with room and board, but they are not compensated with a paycheck, and for that reason, they are not employees, so that is meaning HR may or may not be willing to cover and like advocate for them, and also the work they are doing is not academic, meaning Disability Services on their Campus, it is not within their scope to provide accommodations for those individuals in having their access needs met, so that it is our job. So I supervise a team I cope. I co supervise a 20 person team. 10 of them are directly under my supervision of community assistance in my area, and it is my job to be mindful of any cues that I am perceiving that they are either directly or indirectly expressing barriers and limitations that are impacting their ability to do their job in the way that we have initially outlined it, and it is my job to call attention to those and see how I can provide support, or when appropriate, I connect them to our HR department and say, This is a student leader who is a student volunteer in my area. They need accommodations, and I want to make sure we are following this process and establishing a process. Most importantly, not all campuses have this process. Yes, this has been something that has been fairly new, seeming in my current institution since I have been here, over the past two years that we have called attention to this and been developing SOPs on how to support the students in this way and making sure that as turnover happens in HR, they understand you will hear from these staff, because they will be asking you to support students, and you need to know what your responsibility is there. And we all need to know what our limitations and what the expanse of support we can provide is. So I think that is a great way for us to challenge the limitations that are implied by not having explicit coverage for those students and for those individuals, so that we can move forward and progress. Sure.

Raechele Pope
Another one I think I’ve heard is the one that Antonia mentioned, how in some ways, we’re under reporting the numbers of students, perhaps the number of staff with disabilities on campus, and yet, at the same time, there are more students who are going in and signing up. And so I think that it’s successful that we’re getting more students to we’re eliminating some of that stigma. I think that’s the word you mentioned earlier, and so more students are feeling ready, but at the same time, we’ve gotta do more. We’ve gotta figure out more ways of getting people the access and the services that they need. I’m wondering if you could perhaps share with us some other forms of institutional ableism that goes unrecognized. You know, we can, we can pick out the the big things that happen when we don’t have accessible buildings, you know, still in 2025 or we don’t have accessible cutouts in the right places, so that people with mobility issues. But there’s a lot more institutional ableism that goes unrecognized. Are there any things that you would like to share in this conversation that that can help us.

Antonia De Michiel
I can give a few examples. I think a couple of the ways that this can manifest is just around faculty and staff perceptions of students with non apparent disabilities, right? So, like, you know, overly scrutinizing a student who may be absent from class, right? But they have approved disability related absences accommodations through their disability services office, you know, with certain parameters and expectations set up, right? But then, when the faculty member, you know, questions why the student was absent from class, they likely have a mental health condition or chronic illness that is being exacerbated, right? But that’s only the business of the disability resources professional to really know and help the student navigate right. So the over questioning of students who have certain types of accommodations, or having a faculty member say something as blatant as, I can’t teach a blind student

Raechele Pope
Right? Like it’s not even

Antonia De Michiel
it’s your job faculty member to work with your disability resources professionals, your digital accessibility office to figure out how to teach a blind student, because we all have a shared responsibility to make sure that our disabled students have equal access to their education

Raechele Pope
right, and that those are the kind of obvious things that we need to eliminate and To ensure that faculty and staff know that those that that’s not an option, we all have equal responsibility to do that. I’m wondering if maybe we can talk about what are some of the promising examples of inclusive design or programming or policies that we’ve also seen on campus? I think cat started to mention this new operating procedures that they are putting on her campus that is going to address a particular need. Does anyone have something that’s going on on their campus, or they heard about it another campus, or they’ve talked about at ACPA, that is some promising examples of things that we can be doing,

Kat Hurley
I can expand a little more, if that’s okay. And I also kind of wanted to circle back to this lack of data that we’re seeing a lot of and I think part of the more subtle institutional ableism there is the assumption or assertion that. Like I said, Disability Services is the responsibility of Disability Services exclusively, and a lot of ways that also shows up on campuses is not collecting data on disabled student experiences in your area. I have tried researching in California alone, some like student satisfaction data with housing accommodations. And what alarmed me the most was that I found what I found was no one or very few people were collecting that data. And at best, what I was able to find was they were collecting, like is one of the accommodations you use, housing accommodations and not how are they helpful to you? What is the timeline for implementation? Have you seen any improvement, anything like that, which then limits us in being able to actually make changes, because so many things, especially funding, does rely on data. So how can we start to promote and push better like programming or inclusive line without having data to show the impact it may have, and also considering that part of the reason for Inclusive Design is for the people that cannot, for some reason, report safely, whether it is not clearly safe for them to be only disabled and to accept that identity within themselves, whether they do not have the financial access to acquire the diagnosis and documentation needed to register within their institution for accommodations. There are a lot of things that play into it, and so this inclusive design is a way to support the students who are registered and the students who aren’t. Yeah, they just presented, I believe, at NASA this year, some folks from Butler University about the more broad reach accommodations they were able to start implementing in their residence halls, where they have decompression rooms on or in each residence hall, possibly on each floor. My memory right now is not, you know exact, since it’s not my institution, but all of the students who were approved for that accommodation have access to those rooms, which, as we see, some institutions are struggling with the capacity to do, like single room occupancy, which is a very common accommodation request, but the needs for it vary, whether it be for Chronic Illness, whether it be for neurodivergence and like over stimulation, whether it’s something for like environmental control of like migraines and things which students could benefit from having that decompression space as an alternative accommodation, versus which students needs can really only be met By having that single occupancy so that we can better support more students within our limited capacities, so things like that, of how can we make How can we design the buildings? How can we design these spaces to be more accessible to broader audiences? I also was working in a community of practice for the CSU student success network last academic year, and my working group was focused on optimal practices for neurodivergent, friendly affinity spaces. And with that, there was also, like a need to discuss certain cultural awareness is so you know, you don’t want to walk into a space that is an affinity space for a specific group. Our primary focus for that community of practice was queer spaces and making like how can we optimize developing them in a neurodivergent, friendly way? But we wanted to create this in a way that it could apply to other areas. But you take some of the stereotypes, right, like there are stereotypes about queer people being very loud and flamboyant in that, like vocal way, and then you also look at some of the triggering stimuluses for neurodivergent folks, which can be like an overwhelming amount of sound, especially in a confined space. It’s not appropriate to go into a queer center and say, Hey, as expected, you’re being too loud and you need to quiet down. So some of your peers are welcome here. But what we can do is provide things like, maybe you don’t do fully noise canceling, you know, headphones, but providing, like child size earplugs, so that it dampens but does not eliminate sound, so it’s a more accessible. And I do not know the word I suddenly lost, but like it is a. Least that they can navigate more comfortably. So look at how we can integrate those things without eliminating or potentially harming other students in an attempt to do so.

Raechele Pope
Sure. Well, Kat, your response captured a whole lot of No. No, it’s great. It captured a whole lot of institutional things that we could that people could find out about at different campuses and look at different conference proceedings to find other options. You know, what can I do on my campus? And I was wondering, Erin, if maybe you could focus us in on we can look at the institution, and we can look at big policies, but what are some of the things that individual professionals can start implementing themselves, perhaps in their own practice, the ways in which they view the world and or the ways in which they Start to to think about things differently, to challenge themselves?

Erin Mayo
Yeah, definitely. And if my internet goes out, I apologize it says it’s unstable. So I think some little things that professionals can do is really to remember that the ADA is the floor, not the ceiling, and to really try to implement universal design throughout everything that they do. Some examples can include sending an agenda to folks ahead of time so that folks can prepare their answers to discussion questions, providing a recap meeting, like recap of the meeting with action items, neuro divergence. Folks specifically, really like their structure and organization. I love taking notes and taking plenty of notes so I don’t forget. In addition, it’s really important to use plain language, which is clear and concise language that doesn’t include abstract thinking, so little things can definitely go a long way for folks with disabilities. And going back to cat’s point about decompression rooms at ACPA 25 we launched my team and I, who I were, we were on the convention steering team. We launched ACPA first low sensory room at a convention, and we’re really excited about that going forward to be implemented in future conventions.

Raechele Pope
Yeah, I really think sometimes it’s important to give those just personal, individual steps that we can do, and I think that we can all spoke, speaking mostly to the listeners here. Think of other ways that we can do this, and sometimes it starts with the things like, I’m still struck by Antonio’s statement about the faculty member who says, Well, I can’t teach a blind student, and that really requires personal work to go in and say, Hmm, why did I think that that was okay to exclude a group of students from my class or from the work I do, or from learning this, this field, this information, or whatever. And so we have, you know, like that might be a place to begin. And as I say at every single student affairs now episode that I host, can’t believe we’re out of time. There is so much more to talk about. But you know, I want to give you each a chance to say briefly, to think ahead, like, what gives you hope? What’s one action that you hope listeners will take to advance disability justice in their own context, in their own space? Do you have something like that that you’d like to offer, and it’s okay to say, pass, but I really want to give you an opportunity to to put that out there in the universe. One thing that folks can do, I

Antonia De Michiel
can go first. So my biggest action item to folks in these spaces is to do your own work. Like to do your own work to learn. Listening to this podcast is one way to do that. There’s amazing books out there by disabled authors. Follow disabled creators on LinkedIn that are posting lots of great content. There’s a lot of really accessible content out there, and one of my favorite books that I recommend to anyone is called Disability Visibility by Alice Wong, so that’s my challenge to everyone, is pick up a resource to do your own learning.

Raechele Pope
Thank you. Antonia Mike, how about you next?

Mike Kutnak
So I’m going to tackle this from kind of two perspectives. One is from an employment perspective, since I used to do employee accommodations, what I would say is, know what your role is as a supervisor in the accommodations process at your institution. Each institution is going to have a process that has to be followed. The supervisor is going to be involved in that process in some sort of way. So know what that role is and be ready to do it. Right for your employees, for the people that report to you, those may be full time salaried people, they may be part time students or work studies. They might be volunteers that you get to tap and ask to help you run your event or do the thing that you are tasked with doing. So just know what your role is so that you can help facilitate that process and help those employees get the things that they need to be able to just do their job the way that they need to do it. From the faculty side, one of the things that gives me hope and that gives me makes me smile, is that every semester, I get more students in my class that have accommodation requests. And some faculty may look at that and go, Oh, my God, what do I do with this? But to me, what that tells me is that what we have set up and what we are trying to do to help our students who have disabilities and who need those accommodations is working, and they are coming to my class. When I started teaching, I had one or two students with accommodations now I have five to 10, and to me, that’s a really good thing. I hope that that continues and that I continue to get to work with my colleagues in Disability Services. I always tell my colleagues, we may know our discipline best, but they know how to provide services best, and they have worked with others who have these kinds of situations, so let’s collaborate with them to figure out, how do we apply this access issue and this solution to our discipline?

Raechele Pope
Great, excellent, excellent. Erin, yeah, so

Erin Mayo
I just think it’s really important to really encourage all of our students and our peers to really just continue to self advocate for ourselves. You’re your best kind of advocate, and definitely reach out if you need assistance. I always tell my students I often don’t know you’re struggling, unless there’s a warning sign or you need something. So it’s all of our jobs to just really support them, and however we possibly can with their own self advocacy journey,

Raechele Pope
right? Kat, how about you?

Kat Hurley
Something that really gives me hope is every time that I meet someone that surprises me with their knowledge of like how to support disabled students and disabled employees from their position, or have that connection to the specialists on their campus. So for me, I would say, build those relationships right. Be the person that reaches out to form a campus partnership with the specialists on your campus for Disability Services learn how you can support them in what they do and what you can do in your position, and then also with that, like, manage the expectations you share with the students that you work With, so that if you do find yourself where like you can’t help them with something, but you do know that they can receive guidance or support from disability services. Do not set them up for being frustrated in that initial interaction with their specialist. Set them up to have more smooth process by really managing their expectations, whether it be what how the conversation may or may not go, what limitations your institution may have, or even something as simple as manage the timeline for response that you that they can expect to receive. Because we you know the individual student does not know the caseload of that department on your campus, but you can try to find out. You can talk to them about like, what do I need to make sure students know before they contact you? And how can I best pass them over to you for support. So taking that initiative instead of waiting for them to come to you so that you can take that off their plate and be more actively engaged in supporting the disabled students on your campus,

Raechele Pope
that’s great. Kath, thank you. And Spencer, last but not least.

Spencer Scruggs
Yeah, I so I, I will share. I think the one thing that I wish you know folks would would do particularly is around that element of challenging institution, the institutional ableism behind some of the erasure of disabled students across campus units and so you know, thinking about, why aren’t our housing colleagues or our other identity centers integrating aspects of disability and and understandings of disability into their assessments, into their programming, into a. Other things that they are looking at. You know, we know that when disabled students see disability culture on their campus, and when those things are visible and present, that you know, we can we get to a place of belonging and validation and and persistence, and all those, those, you know, wonderful things that we aim for in our field. And so for that to happen, everyone on a campus has to be fully committed to that work. And so I think it does take a little bit of challenging this notion that, you know, we can’t collect this data, or we can’t, you know, share this information. Or we can’t bring this speaker in, or we, we are nervous about, you know, getting something wrong when it comes to this population. Don’t be nervous about it. Engage with it. You know, be bold in in, you know, centering disability in many ways through your work.

Raechele Pope
So, yeah, people are willing to accept a mistake. It’s the inaction we have real difficulty sitting through right look, I want to thank you all. Erin, Antonia, Kat, Mike Spencer, thank you for sharing your experiences and your insights with us today, we are honored to celebrate these important anniversaries, seeing them as just a beginning to to our listeners, thank you for joining us. We hope today’s conversation sparked ideas, surfaced questions, and maybe even nudged you out of your comfort zone. Disability Inclusion isn’t just a goal, it’s a practice. So here’s our challenge to you, choose one idea from today’s conversation and commit to putting it into practice, whether it’s advocating for universal design, calling out ableism, rethinking a policy, or simply listening more closely and taking action. Do your work. Small changes lead to meaningful progress. Listeners, we also want to let you know that you can find more episodes at studentaffairsnow.com. You can subscribe, rate and review whenever you listen. It really helps us to spread the word. Thanks also to our sponsor, Huron. We really appreciate your support. Huron collaborates with colleges and universities to create sound strategies, optimize operations and accelerate digital transformation by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo. Huron promotes institutional resilience in higher education and for more information, please go. Please visit go.hcg.com/now. Huge shout out to Natalie Ambrosey, the production assistant for the podcast, who does all the behind the scenes work to make us look and sound good. I’m Raechele Pope, until next time hang in there you.

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