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The New Normal

Elise Witmer was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and endometriosis, a chronic pain condition, at four and 14-years-old, respectively. She received accommodations for her conditions throughout her school career, but Witmer did not want accommodations when she arrived at college– she wanted to be “normal.”

A desire for normalcy is a common feeling among incoming freshman, says Ruben Mota, Assistant Director at University of Wisconsin’s McBurney Disability Resource Center. The McBurney Center is an establishment on campus that works with students with visible or invisible disabilities to develop personalized learning plans for success. Accommodations, such as extended time or lecture-captioning, help implement these plans into school life. 

In Witmer’s case, she ended up pursuing accommodations in the second semester of her freshman year. 

“I wish that I had known what McBurney really did. If I had accommodations, I didn’t have to use them. So, I didn’t have to, in my case, try to be normal,” Witmer said. 

Recently, McBurney changed their accommodations program from the VISA (Verified Individualized Services and Accommodations) program to a Faculty Notification Letter. This change reflects student concerns, such as Witmer’s, that their accommodations will not be as personalized as they would like them to be. The VISA held all of a student’s accommodations, regardless of class, whereas the new Faculty Notification Letter allows students to request accommodations for individual classes. 

Further, this new program recognizes that the definition of disability has shifted to include invisible disabilities, such as metal illness or learning disabilities. In the five years since Mota has worked at the McBurney Center, students with invisible disabilities have become the largest population the McBurney Center serves: roughly 700 out of 2,220 students, according to the McBurney Center. 

One challenge that comes with this shift is skepticism surrounding invisible disabilities, which Mota says that can cause conflict between students and faculty.

“It stems around a lot of the unknown. Will this accommodation reduce the academic standard or integrity that I am expecting of my student?” Mota explains. 

Witmer believes that spreading awareness is the way to break down social stigmas, such as those surrounding disabilities. At UW-Madison, there is a lack of disability awareness, apparent in the funding and data collection for disability programs. In 2017, according to the ASM internal budget, the ASM did not pass a budget increase for disability inclusions programming and there was no further allocation of money toward disability programs. Further, programming for disability inclusion decreased 34-fold, one of the largest decreases of all initiatives, according to the Diversity Inventory Program Summary.

In order to reverse this trend, Mota proposed an orientation or training program, similar to that of AlcholEdu, that educates incoming freshman on diversity and inclusion, focusing specifically on visible and invisible disabilities alike. 

“Can you really take a moment to develop a curiosity to understand the other’s perspective…to develop a dimension of understanding,” Mota says of the potential program’s goals. 

Another solution to the lack of awareness surrounding disability is universal design, the concept in which anyone, with or without a disability, is able to access class materials, buildings and technology in a flexible manner. 

“Implementing these accommodations in the framework of how classes work, doesn’t just help those with disabilities, it helps everyone succeed more,” Witmer said. 

Cathy Trueba, director of the Office of Compliance and ADA Coordinator also supports the idea of universal design. 

“Let’s design this and not just around accessibility, but can we make it really usable. When we think of the idea of usability, we often have accessibility already built in,” Trueba said. 

The big idea behind universal design, Trueba said, is that disability is automatically included in the definition of diversity, allowing others the opportunity to benefit from those with disabilities. 

Reducing the stigma around disabilities through Mota’s program and universal design would diminish the fear that Witmer felt and many other students feel about being normal. Heightening awareness would also increase inclusion, creating an overall more welcoming campus and constructing a new definition of normal.