July-August 2005

Youth with disabilities demand changes at Roosevelt University

CHICAGO – The ADVANCE Youth Leadership Project (AYLP) at Access Living, an activist group of young people with disabilities ages 18-25, is pushing for improved disability accommodations at Roosevelt University.

AYLP met with Nancy Litke, director of Roosevelt’s Academic Success Center, on July 12 and earned its first advocacy victory. AYLP won an agreement to discussions on workshops about disability rights, as well as an agreement to help with increasing faculty awareness. Litke also agreed to ask students with disabilities to speak with AYLP about their college experience.  

Though nervous about their first meeting as youth advocates, AYLP members were proud of its results. “As young disability activists, we want to show our pride by fighting for equal education rights for people with disabilities,” said Nico Echols.  

AYLP is the first youth leadership project at Access Living to ever develop its own community advocacy project. The group wants to change the systems that affect students with disabilities. One AYLP member, who is a student at Roosevelt University, has faced discrimination in the classroom because of her disability. The university disability services coordinator has tried to help, but the professor created problems because he would not provide accessible learning materials to the student. AYLP decided to try to advocate not only for this one student but for all Roosevelt students with disabilities by asking for a meeting to show an outside group cares about what is happening at the university. 

For college students with disabilities, advocacy options are limited. The person holding the key to accommodations is the disability service coordinator, who can allow or deny accommodations according to interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. If a student chooses to complain, the student risks the displeasure of the coordinator. Some students have vocational rehabilitation counselors, who can help advocate for their needs, but many do not. Some have parents who stand up for them, but there is almost no other group that can help advocate for the student’s needs. Usually, the student is not even aware of places like Access Living, which in addition to providing leadership training also has a legal advocacy division, or places like Equip for Equality, which helps advocate for disability rights. There is no college-student led advocacy organization focused solely on attaining reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities. AYLP is an attempt at filling that gap. The following poem, by member Michael Flores, reflects on AYLP’s Roosevelt experience thus far:

Here we are, really good young adults,
Full of great lives to accomplish,
Born with disabilities.
Here in our group,
We are meant to be alive for a reason,
To have justice for all of us who are disabled
Living out in the world.
 
Everyone says our first meeting with Nancy Litke sure went well,
though at the time, everyone was truly scared and shy.
But Nancy was shocked! Why?
She saw how many good young adults went,
Including how many were there with wheelchairs.
 
Even though the group was nervous, we carried on,
Being prepared with our questions,
So well prepared on what was answered or asked of us all.