The Disabled Student Union is a club here at Christopher Newport University who meet in the multicultural lounge on the third floor of the David Student Union (DSU). This club is an opportunity for students with disabilities to discuss grievances about living on campus as well as how their disabilities affect their everyday lives. Through every meeting, the members learn more about different things they can do as well as just feel heard and seen by other people like them. While they do work towards comfortability within the community, it is also about individuality. They are a part of this amazing community together, but they are also their own individual person and this club has found ways to balance this concept over time. Not only do they talk about their daily life , they also participate in different activities such as coloring nights and powerpoint nights.coming up, they will decorate their mobility aids; such as canes, wheelchairs, etc.
A part of our discussion was not only how the club helps the individuals in it, but also what this school can do to help aid people with disabilities. A couple of the ideas that were discussed are more ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, include compliant rooms on the first floors of residence halls, not having the desks with the attached chairs within classrooms, bigger stalls in the bathrooms, wider ramps and many other suggestions. These suggestions came from the mindset of how we are an accessible campus, but not a friendly campus towards people with disabilities. We have the ramps and other aids, but they are not designed with disabilities in mind as much as they are done to reach a standard. Gwendolyn Ware says, “This club is not proportional to the disabled student population at CNU”.
There are different types of disabilities and so many others out there who this club would love to meet and help. Lily Donovan adds, “Before I knew about the Disabled Student Union I felt very secluded and not really welcome here. It has provided the support I needed and made me a lot happier and livelier on campus.”
When asked why she chose CNU, Lily Donovan says, “When I first visited CNU, I really liked how tight knit the campus was. It was smaller and more condensed than a lot of the other campuses I toured.” Gwendolyn Ware then also says, “I chose CNU because it was the one campus I toured where I could get where I needed to be without having to rely on someone else for help.” CNU’s small campus has become an attractive point for students with disabilities because it allows them to navigate independently.
Another large talking point was how the campus views our disabled students and how this affects them. We talked about how anyone at any time can become disabled and we have accommodations available for them. However, the process is not an easy one to navigate with preexisting disabilities let alone new ones popping up. One of the members said, “Most [members] of the disabled community were not born that way…it just happened one day because of an event in their life”.
Then another member followed up with a reply, “And getting these diagnoses are not easy to get for most…and then you get looked at differently once you do finally get that diagnosis”. When asked how she feels about this, Kaitlynn Snell, says “I am more than just my disability. I am still human. I am just as capable as my peers”. We need to look at our disabled students and get to know the person, not the disabilities. This is a huge part of what the Disabled Student Union is about.
