The KU Disability Network
The mission is to promote a KU campus climate that facilitates full participation of people with disabilities.
The goals are to facilitate communication about campus and community events of interest to campus members with disabilities and promote networking between people with disabilities and those interested in disability issues.
Events
Summer Meeting: Monday, July 28th. Noon - 1:00 @ Pine Room, Kansas Union
Past Events
To look at past events sponsored by the KU Disability Network click here.
Media Coverage
City and KU agree to honor passes (From http://www.lawrencetransit.org/)
A new agreement between the City and the University of Kansas will allow easier access to both bus systems. KU students, faculty and staff will be able to ride the T fixed-route service free by showing a valid KU ID.* Conversely, riders who show a valid Lawrence Transit System bus pass or transfer slip will be able to ride the university fixed-route buses for free. The new system begins August 18 when the fall semester starts. Information about KU on Wheels is available here.
*The university is now offering an updated version of the KU Card. Starting, Oct. 1, 2008, KU students, faculty and staff will need to show the new KU Card to ride T buses free. Until then, drivers will accept the current KU ID.
Striking Out for Solidarity (From Lawrence.com story)
New group hopes to create cohesion among the scattered disabled community on Mt. Oread
“Whatever the social setting and whatever the disability, people with disabilities share a common experience of social oppression.”
— disability historian Paul Longmore, quoted on the UC-Berkeley website on the disability rights and independent living movement
It’s hard to force change when you’re a minority of five. When you compose 0.019 percent of the student body at KU.
Five = the number of students last year who reported having mobility issues. No wonder it took until this year—17 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guaranteed their rights—for KU to buy a few buses equipped with lifts.
“For other oppressed groups, a situation like this is called separate and unequal. For students with disabilities at the University, it is called ‘not enough funds,’" - Dot Nary, a KU graduate student and wheelchair user, wrote in a letter to the The University Daily Kansan a couple years ago in an effort to lobby for the new buses.
That number—five—makes other minority groups at KU look robust by comparison. There were 902 African American students, for instance, last year, and 906 Latinos (each comprising just 3.4 percent of the student body).
Perhaps this is why it wasn’t until the mid-’70s that the doors of KU were cracked open for people with mobile disabilities. This was when Roger Williams, a wheelchair user, sued the university at a time when nearly all of campus was inaccessible. And today, 17 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guaranteed equal opportunity on paper, opportunity is far from equal in practice.
The rest of the Lawrence.com article is located at their website.
Steering Committee
Marla Herron - Staff (Associate University Registrar)
Rachel Magario - Graduate Student
Kathy Rose-Mockry - Staff (Program Director for the Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center)
Dot Nary - Graduate Student
Steve Ramirez - Staff (Equal Opportunity Specialist/Human Resources and Equal Opportunity)
Dr. Glen White - Faculty (Professor, Applied Behavioral science)
For more information contact the organization at at disnet@ku.edu.
