Anna Rinaggio, Campus Carrier asst. arts and living editor
The Coalition for Neurodiverse and Disability Rights recently held their first meeting of the year. Junior Lucy Hicks, one of the co-leaders of the coalition, received funding to start the group after winning the Social Impact Challenge last year. She was inspired to participate when she saw one of her fellow classmates, Anaiah Rucker, who has a prosthetic leg, struggling with things pertaining to accessibility on campus.
“I lived on the same hall with [Rucker], and I was taking Dr. Haney’s [class on] the history of intellectual disability,” Hicks said. “We were learning about the disability rights movement and the things today that are still kind of prevalent issues, and Anaiah was having a lot of trouble. [She] was in Deerfield, so one of the newest buildings on campus, and she was having a lot of trouble.”
Hicks said that this was what drew her attention to certain aspects of inaccessibility on campus, such as the laundry room doors in Morgan and Deerfield halls, which do not have a handicap automatic door opener.
“It was this whole thing, [and] we knew it shouldn’t be that difficult, so that’s mainly where it started,” said Hicks.
The group is meant to be both a community for students with disabilities as well as a place for anyone who wants to learn and be an ally or advocate for more accessibility on campus.
“The biggest thing is really about providing a safe space for people with disabilities [and those who] are neurodiverse,” Hicks said. “Our biggest goals are integrating community advocacy and education, so for the community aspect that’s kind of like the monthly meetings, of course, but then also connecting with partners in the Rome community, being able to connect with them and bring them on campus and make those connections between our students here.”
Besides monthly meetings, Hicks is hoping that the coalition will be able to do events like going out into the Rome community for service opportunities and bringing in speakers for CE credit events to reach a larger audience.
“We’re looking to meet once a month as a group, and then for other initiatives that we decided we want to work on, there might be another meeting a month for that,” Hicks said. “We plan on bringing some guest speakers and having CE credits, that’s a big part of the kind of the educational component of it, so making that able to reach the wider audience through that, and then we’d like to do some community service with some of the groups around Rome.”
Michelle Haney, a professor of psychology and the faculty advisor for the coalition, said that the group also aims to empower students of all abilities to support and advocate for one another.
“I believe the goals of this group are to help develop a sense of empowerment of Berry students, both students that, you know, everybody has something that makes them different, but students that really self-identify as having a disability,” Haney said. “Having a group of allies to make the changes that are needed to advocate for each other.”
Haney said that the group is not meant to replace the Academic Success Center (ASC) for getting accommodations, but to rather act as another level of support.
“This group is really about students serving as allies empowering each other to hear things from students, authentic voices of students, that maybe students are not comfortable with or can’t share with an official document,” Haney said “We understand that it’s important to note for getting accommodations in your classes through the Academic Success Center, and that’s good and important, but I think the idea is that this group is another layer, and it’s really like peers helping peers.”
Senior Anaiah Rucker is a member of the coalition and said that the group is important to her because it provides a place for her to voice her perspective as an individual with a disability on campus.
“[The group] means a lot because I’ve been here for basically three and a half years, and it’s hard to fit in where most people are able bodied around here,” Rucker said. “So it’s good to have some sort of group organization come together to support those who have differences on this campus because there’s not a lot of people on this campus who have a disability. It gives me an opportunity to be more vocal about my disability and to help those who don’t have the voice to say anything.”
Rucker said that having groups like this at Berry is important because there are plenty of groups on campus, but none that are specific for people with disabilities.
“You have groups for everything else, but it’s like you never really have a group that is specific towards situations like this,” Rucker said. “You have the BSA, the Black Student Association, you have clubs here towards majors and then others like for environmental clubs and stuff like that. What you don’t have are clubs geared towards people with disabilities.”
Like Hicks, Rucker said that the group is meant for any and all students who want to join, not just those with a disability.
“Basically anyone [can join] because it’s not a secluded club, it’s for anyone who wants to be a part of something that can possibly create change around here,” Rucker said. “So it’s not just for those who have disabilities, it’s for those who have people in their lives who have a disability and want to be more of an advocate for [them], who just want to be part of something that could help.”
The coalition has an Instagram, @berrycndr, where students can sign up to be on the email list. The group is also in the process of creating a website with more resources for students interested in the future.