Flu kills too: A Response to More Ableist Nonsense
(Editing to say that I have since received communication from the person involved that they were honestly trying to hash out responses to a legitimate accommodations request on this issue. Which is interesting to me both in that the person's tone of voice when saying this didn't feel consistent with this and leaves me questioning my perceptions, but also in that it still baffles me that that conversation wasn't short and sweet to the tune of "well, we should accommodate when needed." Leaving the rest of the post since there are many relevant issues and attitudes discussed in it whatever the original conversation may have been)
In doing advocacy for remote access at KU, one member of the IOA revealed to me that they were working on the issue of remote access, but were currently hashing out, what seemed to her a very reasonable and realistic fear: that after COVID-19 some student would try to unfairly secure remote access by claiming they were more vulnerable to the flu. To be fair to the person who shared this with me, they were doing so much, and had been incredibly supportive, informed, and helpful. This was a small aside. It also was an impactful one. Apparently those participating in these meetings really feel that they need to spend their valuable COVID-19 Fall 2020 planning time hashing this out.
In doing advocacy for remote access at KU, one member of the IOA revealed to me that they were working on the issue of remote access, but were currently hashing out, what seemed to her a very reasonable and realistic fear: that after COVID-19 some student would try to unfairly secure remote access by claiming they were more vulnerable to the flu. To be fair to the person who shared this with me, they were doing so much, and had been incredibly supportive, informed, and helpful. This was a small aside. It also was an impactful one. Apparently those participating in these meetings really feel that they need to spend their valuable COVID-19 Fall 2020 planning time hashing this out.
In the moment, I was definitely horrified, feeling like students who were more at risk from the flu should have remote access if they want or need it. But the full weight of this ableist trope/fear did not hit me until later. Because it is not just that these sorts of fears already make access to needed accommodations (or better yet, dreaming away here, Universal Design) so difficult to attain by setting the bar so high that in concert with medical biases such as medical sexism, it can be nearly impossible for students to get the accommodations they need. Just for an example, accommodations I needed at 19, I finally got at 42 years old, if that gives you any idea.
Then it really struck me that not only do these sorts of prejudices and fears provide obstacles for Disabled People's inclusion and equity, it also denies our lived experiences. Because given the barriers that already exist it is far far more likely that students more at risk from 
the flu will not be able to get remote access or other needed accommodations than it is that some student falsely claiming this vulnerability would "unfairly get" accommodations that were undeserved.
This needs to be broken down in so many ways, from the way she spoke of the flu like it was nothing more than a mild cold, from the real barriers to access that do exist in the system, to the actual dangers posed by the flu that kill people every year.
So let's start with speaking of the flu as if it were mild and of no concern. Many folks with asthma or other conditions too many to name end up experiencing weeks to months of illness if they catch an upper respiratory condition of any kind, cold or flu. To people severely immunocompromised or high risk people due to other conditions, these can also be deadly or especially without remote access, leave people unable to come in to class or jobs for those weeks or months and leave them stalled, dismissed from their programs, or even fired from their jobs for too many absences. Furthermore, according to the CDC, during the 2017-2018 season alone, influenza caused 959,000 hospitalizations, and 79,400 deaths.
This needs to be broken down in so many ways, from the way she spoke of the flu like it was nothing more than a mild cold, from the real barriers to access that do exist in the system, to the actual dangers posed by the flu that kill people every year.
So let's start with speaking of the flu as if it were mild and of no concern. Many folks with asthma or other conditions too many to name end up experiencing weeks to months of illness if they catch an upper respiratory condition of any kind, cold or flu. To people severely immunocompromised or high risk people due to other conditions, these can also be deadly or especially without remote access, leave people unable to come in to class or jobs for those weeks or months and leave them stalled, dismissed from their programs, or even fired from their jobs for too many absences. Furthermore, according to the CDC, during the 2017-2018 season alone, influenza caused 959,000 hospitalizations, and 79,400 deaths.
This is certainly nothing to "sneeze" at. The toll of influenza is high, and super high for more at risk people. And it is appalling to me that the University's first concern isn't that higher-risk students might be denied an accommodation that could keep them from dying or experiencing everything from complications to hospitalizations, but rather their first concern is students taking advantage of the system. Frankly, I don't give a rat's sphincter muscle if a few students do this. I would rather see a few students get something they didn't need than having students with legitimate need experience more barriers to education and employment. For anyone curious, it turns out that Disabled People's access to education and employment are abysmally low. I could write a whole separate blogpost on how many people still have no problem with saying that we don't deserve life and should be sacrificed for healthier people's comfort and the economy.
But also, let's look at the relative likelihoods of a student getting the access accommodation they need, and the likelihood of a student who didn't have any health concerns being able to get that same accommodation. And what super appalls me is that those in offices relating to accommodations who should know this first hand from their student they work with, don't.
To even get an accommodation of any sort (the process is likely different for jobs, but here I am speaking of academic accommodations), first you have to have a Doctor test and diagnose you with some condition that requires an accommodation. Then, not only does the doctor have to let the campus know about the diagnosis and specific accommodations they are recommending, they also have to send offices the results of said tests. They require biocertification in detail. They won't even trust a doctor's word.
But let's dig even deeper in this, because medical sexism is becoming an increasingly well-known term, as is its intersection with Blackness and the experience of Black Women trying to seek medical care who experience even more of it when compounded with medical racism. Research has demonstrated the increased diagnosis times women experience in comparison to men for their conditions, the way doctors disbelieve women's accounts of pain (even though we have higher pain tolerances due to our bodies being designed to pass a baby the size of a watermelon out an orifice the size of an orange), and often under-test, misdiagnose, and under-treat women based on these prejudices. All of these are even more severe for Black Women experiencing medical sexism and racism at the same damn time. This makes it harder for Women and Women of Color to even get the diagnosis they need much less the testing and documentation compared to men.
So to even get an accommodation, a student has to have a susceptibility to influenza that a doctor sees, believes, has witnessed, and can and will provide testing documentation for. If they are women, they have to also overcome the obstacles of medical sexism with the doctor they are seeing.Then the accommodations office has to verify that provided documentation, decide whether they feel like it is "reasonable" (which news flash folks, as the last several weeks has pointed out, even when doctors write the AAAC and say "my patient needs this accommodation due to x,y, and z" the AAAC can still decide its "unreasonable"), and if they decide it is, then the Professor ultimately can choose whether or not to grant the accommodation, though usually they do agree to do so in my experience when the AAAC backs it.
So can we please talk about how ridiculous and vanishingly small the likelihood that a student who didn't have any higiher-risk due to flu would be able to get a doctor to sign off on that and provide documentation through testing to the relevant office? Without that there is no decision for the AAAC to make. This is literally a next to impossible situation for them to encounter. Do you see how absolutely ridiculous it is for them to put this fear up as an obstacle to granting vulnerable students remote access during COVID-19, or even granting it to students who need it and have been asking for it for years afterwards?
But yet again, accommodations that could save lives and provide a little more equity to Disabled Students is literally being stalled and questioned due to fears of some random accommodations seeker (which by the way, do they even have any idea how much internalized ableist shame one has to work through to even admit one needs such accommodations much less ask for one?) might "take advantage of the system." No one ever asks if the system is so bad that people might feel the need to or have the fear of someone taking advantage of it, maybe it needs to be torn down and rebuilt. Even worse, nobody ever flips the conversation to ask the all important question of what students might be lacking that needed accommodation that people are shaking in their boots over whether someone "undeserving" might get it. Which literally, by the way, does stem from the history of poor folks and Disabled folks being defined as "deserving" or "undeserving" poor for the sake of allocation of whatever scant resources they were willing to grudgingly hand over.
Literally, this playlist of ableist nonsense is centuries years old. Let's find a new tune. And start asking instead what needs Disabled Folks might have that aren't being met and how we (by we I mean Disabled Folks) can design our worlds so that we can meet our needs. Remote access is a fantastic one to start off with. Because Ableism is a virus with a one hundred percent transmission rate.
But also, let's look at the relative likelihoods of a student getting the access accommodation they need, and the likelihood of a student who didn't have any health concerns being able to get that same accommodation. And what super appalls me is that those in offices relating to accommodations who should know this first hand from their student they work with, don't.
To even get an accommodation of any sort (the process is likely different for jobs, but here I am speaking of academic accommodations), first you have to have a Doctor test and diagnose you with some condition that requires an accommodation. Then, not only does the doctor have to let the campus know about the diagnosis and specific accommodations they are recommending, they also have to send offices the results of said tests. They require biocertification in detail. They won't even trust a doctor's word.
But let's dig even deeper in this, because medical sexism is becoming an increasingly well-known term, as is its intersection with Blackness and the experience of Black Women trying to seek medical care who experience even more of it when compounded with medical racism. Research has demonstrated the increased diagnosis times women experience in comparison to men for their conditions, the way doctors disbelieve women's accounts of pain (even though we have higher pain tolerances due to our bodies being designed to pass a baby the size of a watermelon out an orifice the size of an orange), and often under-test, misdiagnose, and under-treat women based on these prejudices. All of these are even more severe for Black Women experiencing medical sexism and racism at the same damn time. This makes it harder for Women and Women of Color to even get the diagnosis they need much less the testing and documentation compared to men.
So to even get an accommodation, a student has to have a susceptibility to influenza that a doctor sees, believes, has witnessed, and can and will provide testing documentation for. If they are women, they have to also overcome the obstacles of medical sexism with the doctor they are seeing.Then the accommodations office has to verify that provided documentation, decide whether they feel like it is "reasonable" (which news flash folks, as the last several weeks has pointed out, even when doctors write the AAAC and say "my patient needs this accommodation due to x,y, and z" the AAAC can still decide its "unreasonable"), and if they decide it is, then the Professor ultimately can choose whether or not to grant the accommodation, though usually they do agree to do so in my experience when the AAAC backs it.
So can we please talk about how ridiculous and vanishingly small the likelihood that a student who didn't have any higiher-risk due to flu would be able to get a doctor to sign off on that and provide documentation through testing to the relevant office? Without that there is no decision for the AAAC to make. This is literally a next to impossible situation for them to encounter. Do you see how absolutely ridiculous it is for them to put this fear up as an obstacle to granting vulnerable students remote access during COVID-19, or even granting it to students who need it and have been asking for it for years afterwards?
But yet again, accommodations that could save lives and provide a little more equity to Disabled Students is literally being stalled and questioned due to fears of some random accommodations seeker (which by the way, do they even have any idea how much internalized ableist shame one has to work through to even admit one needs such accommodations much less ask for one?) might "take advantage of the system." No one ever asks if the system is so bad that people might feel the need to or have the fear of someone taking advantage of it, maybe it needs to be torn down and rebuilt. Even worse, nobody ever flips the conversation to ask the all important question of what students might be lacking that needed accommodation that people are shaking in their boots over whether someone "undeserving" might get it. Which literally, by the way, does stem from the history of poor folks and Disabled folks being defined as "deserving" or "undeserving" poor for the sake of allocation of whatever scant resources they were willing to grudgingly hand over.
Literally, this playlist of ableist nonsense is centuries years old. Let's find a new tune. And start asking instead what needs Disabled Folks might have that aren't being met and how we (by we I mean Disabled Folks) can design our worlds so that we can meet our needs. Remote access is a fantastic one to start off with. Because Ableism is a virus with a one hundred percent transmission rate.
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