Ableism Showing up at Longwood

A large amount of snow fell this weekend here in Farmville, VA. The campus of Longwood University is still covered under the snow and many sidewalks are still treacherous. I know because I've slipped several times just walking to and from class. On Monday the school opted to have a short delay and open up for classes starting at ten. The sidewalks were in a much worse condition than they are now and were slowly being cleaned up. I'm not bashing the staff and volunteers who came out to do the big job of shoveling all that snow because I know how hard of a job that is and campus has a lot of sidewalks to try to uncover, especially since the snow had just stopped coming down on Saturday evening. Now, I'm not complaining just because classes weren't cancelled and I didn't want to get out of bed. I'm complaining because of how ableism showed up here at Longwood on that icy morning.

As a nondisabled person I had very little trouble besides maybe a few slips here and there getting to and from class, but what about those who are disabled? Who was concerned about them when classes started and the sidewalks weren't clear? Who was concerned about their wheelchairs not being able to make it up a hill or through the icy patches? It seems to me that no one considered them in the decision to keep school open. If I'm wrong and there was a plan for disabled students to be able to get to class then please tell me. But as far I can tell from the stories I've heard there was no such plan. Rumors tell me that a student in a power chair got stuck and had to be physically carried into a building. My professor of Sociology, Dr. Milne, said today that it was kind of that person to help out but why did they have to? He also pointed out something that I hadn't considered: The nondisabled students got an unearned privilege on Monday which is something that some lazy college students may not look at as a privilege but on that day even the laziest nondisabled student had the privilege of physically being able to make it to class one step at a time all on their own.

This unequal treatment for the disabled by the nondisabled is ridiculous. What should the University have done in order to help these students? Maybe for starters they should have considered the condition of the sidewalk before telling students to go to class when not ALL students had an equal chance to get there. Now some could argue that the students who had to drive to campus in the mess were in a predicament too or that those who had to walk to class could have trouble also. But mind you, the unequal treatment that I'm talking about here has to do with the fact that nondisabled commuters and students had many more options of how to get to class than those students who are confined to wheelchairs.

Ignoring our privilege is easy because we don't feel like we have to deal with it for many different reasons. As nondisabled people, we can choose to consider our disability or the disability of others. Taken from Allan Johnson's book entitled "Privilege, Power, and Difference" he points out that "nondisabled people can choose whether to be conscious of their disability status or to ignore it and regard themselves simply as human beings." On that day, when the snow and ice still covered many walkways the nondisabled students got to see themselves simply as students who could go to class or leave their building with very little consideration of their disability status.

Sometimes facing inequality makes us uncomfortable or feel guilt but that won't help the situation. We must face inequality and our own dominance in society in order to ever have a chance of getting things evened out.