Staff Standpoint with Romel Mackelprang

As well as being a professor, you're the Director of the Center for Disability Studies at EWU. What do you do in that position?

The position was created with the support of a previous department of education grant. Some of our major activities are providing ongoing staff and faculty diversity trainings, and I administer the 16 hour certificate course in disability studies.

We've been involved in helping students with disabilities and students from all diverse backgrounds make the transition to the university setting. I don't know if you're aware, but Eastern is somewhat unique in that, out of all the major universities in the state, we have the highest percentage of students that government agencies would consider at risk. That would encompass first generation, low income, students of color, students with disability - kind of that spectrum of students that are the highest risk of not succeeding if you look at things nationally.

So with my work we really began focusing on students with disabilities, but what we've really come to realize is that, rather than just addressing students with disabilities in this silo, that if we provide an environment of universal access, it will benefit students of all backgrounds, both minority and majority.

There is something called Universal Education Access that you helped put in place here at EWU. Can you tell me what that is?

Twenty or thirty years ago, a group of architects developed this concept of universal design, and that really was in the physical world. Buildings, built 40 or 50 years ago, they all had steps, well, they said, "Lets design the building from the outset so that anybody can get into it." You had to be of a certain height to get to the drinking fountain.

If you were a wheelchair user you couldn't use things like bathroom sinks because even if you could wheel a chair underneath the counter, you then had exposed pipes. So, if you had someone with paraplegia, wheels his chair in and has no sensation on his legs, you get the hot water pipe and now you have a second or third degree burn on the legs.

So this idea was to develop a society that is accessible to all people. That was then adopted in the university setting as the idea of Universal Instructional Design, which is that instructors set up their classrooms so that students from all diverse backgrounds can succeed.

What we've done is to expand that concept to Universal Education Access so that it's not just in a classroom but throughout the entire university setting.

Let me give you an instructional example. And first, understand that we have Disability Support Services and we're a completely different entity from them. But if disability support services documents a disability and instructor then might get a letter that says, "This student needs time and a half for a test." By law then, we're required to give a student extra time if it's what we call a "reasonable accommodation."

Well, I have students of all backgrounds in my classes and if I give a test, I need to determine if time is a critical element in passing the test. If it's a multiple choice test, time might not be important. Now, if I'm a nursing instructor and I'm giving a test on CPR, then time and a half doesn't cut it. But for most of my tests, time is not that critical, so with Universal Education Access, I tell my students, "Look, if you need a little extra time, it's fine."

Maybe that's a student where English is a second language, maybe it's a student that has test anxiety. Whatever, I'll make extended time available to anybody rather than doing something special for my disabled student.

It's making sure everything is universally accessible. It's making sure our brochures represent the spectrum of students. In terms of testing and evaluating performance, it's providing a broad spectrum of ways to evaluate student performance, rather than going for the traditional white, middle class ways of evaluating criteria.

In admissions, what I find as fascinating is Affirmative Action. With traditional admissions, we set up this criteria that is based on a white, middle class standard. Test scores, GPA, those types of things. And they're set up very much on a cultural predetermined standard. We say, "If you're from a disadvantaged background we'll give you extra points or we'll do something extra for you."

My sense is, let's set up our admissions criteria not so that we do something special, but let's set it up so that we in fact honor people from diverse backgrounds and so that they are weighted on their attributes and contributions as much as our traditional students. So essentially we kind of changed the rules to be inclusive to all.

The key is what we don't do. We don't lower expectations, but we figure out the essential components. What do we want and what are our outcomes? Then we find multiple ways to asses the outcomes that we want.

How does EWU measure up to other universities across the nation and the world in terms of disability services and diversity?

I came here 21 years ago, and when I came here the Provost's office had a secretary with 10 percent of her time devoted to disability services. I and some other people advocated some change and, in addition to that, the Americans with Disabilities Act had an impact. By about 1990 or so we'd established a half time position for disability support. That lasted one year before they realized, "Oh Boy." And that position was converted to full time. Now we have several people, so we have a strong disability support here.

I think where we are still struggling, is that we do not on this campus we do not recognize disability as diversity, and I would refer you to our diversity pages on the EWU website. Nowhere is disability mentioned. As a disabled man, I find that distressing because, with a disability I perceive the world differently, my life experiences are different than the typical person. It doesn't mean I'm pathological, but it means that things are different.

I think we're making progress, but what we're trying to change is an environment in which, campus wide, when we speak of disability we see that as an element of diversity, and I don't think we do that as well as we could.

You've been active in the disability rights movement for nearly 30 years now. How have you seen the situation improve for those with disabilities and in what areas does progress still need to happen in the U.S. as a whole?

Boy, tremendous improvements. Let's first understand that when I first got involved in the disability rights movement, if you were a business owner, if you owned a restaurant and you wanted steps in your restaurant, and you didn't want somebody in a wheelchair in there, you had the right to exclude them.

"They make my other customers feel uncomfortable, I don't want disabled people." You had the right to exclude them.

1990 was the first civil rights act in the United States for disabled people. We had laws before that said, "If you get federal money you can't discriminate," but the Americans with Disabilities Act really helped to change that. We just had some amendments passed this year which helped to strengthen that.

So, things have improved tremendously in terms of public policy and public law. We're finding people who are being deinstitutionalized. People were essentially incarcerated in institutions and we're finding some people getting out of institutions. We're finding greater access to societal resources.

To give you an idea, the equivalent of a Martin Luther King or people in the feminist movement, we have people who got involved in the disability rights movement in the '70s because they weren't even afforded any access to society, so we've seen great improvements.

Now, problems that still exist: Our unemployment rate is still dramatically high. Our access to societal resources still lags tremendously. Society is still reticent to invest in us.

What do you mean by that?

Let me give you an example. If you're disabled, you can get social security, you can get insurance and things like that, and many people become trapped into that. For some disabled people, they may want to work, but if they work they'll die. How? Well, let's say you're on Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid. If you go to work and start making too much money, they'll cut off your medical benefits. Well, if you've got significant medical benefits, you can't afford to go to work.

Even college students we have say, "What am I going to do when I graduate? I have to make sure I get a job that has tremendous insurance benefits." Well, what are we doing? We're cutting insurance benefits across the board.

So what is being said is, "We'll give you a monthly check." But doggonit, invest in disabled people. Put money in and expect us and provide us with opportunities to be contributing citizens. Our biggest problems are not our internal pathologies, but society's lack of willingness to let us be full participants in society.

You just returned from Sydney, Australia, where I hear you were the only American invited to speak at the Annual Strength in Unity Conference. Tell me about this conference, what it is and what you spoke on.

It's a combined conference of The Australian Association of Social Work, The Australian Association of Social Work Educators and The Australian Association of Community Workers. These three national organizations meet together. The reason I was invited was my expertise on disability rights and what I was able to do was to go down and talk about that and universal access. One of the focuses was joining diverse communities while maintaining our sense of identity - our sense of pride - while working together and getting out of our silos.

I think that for many of the people there it was surprising to start to look at disability from a diversity model rather than a pathology model. That was really the emphasis I had and, subsequent to that we've established some nice relationships with some universities down there and I've been asked to write an article for the primary Australian social work journal How can students better help integrate those with disabilities into mainstream society?

It's a great question. By changing the lens from one of pathology to diversity and by accepting disabled students as full and equal participants in the environment here, and also by looking for the contributions and unique perspectives that disabled students bring.

It's interesting, and I'll use language that's probably offensive to you, it's offensive to me, but if you're in a classroom or in a group of students and said "nigger" or "spic" or "She's a bitch," that wouldn't be acceptable. But "that's so retarded" is not uncommon at all.

If you listen for words that are disability words, like "cripple" or "lame," they're frequently used in very pejorative terms. Well let me tell you, I hear that every bit as much as a black man is going to hear "nigger" or a woman hears "bitch." And believe me, I'm the least politically correct guy around. I'm not asking for political correctness, because I talk about gimps and cripples all the time, but I'm part of the culture, I can do that. But change that mindset to one of valuing diversity.

We're trying to establish a culture at this university of the acceptance of disability as part of the diverse tapestry of our society.