The hardest part of this semester was trying to urge #students, amid the available #technologies, to really #read. Most friends worldwide are on mobile phones, preferring short posts, and not easily accessing links. I can therefore be thankful for the global readership of my #publications in these #research#repositories:
Japan's ResearchMap (和英), where I have filled in #Japanese as well as English information about publications (6,600+ downloads): https://researchmap.jp/waoe
Submitted a work order to Facilities because there is a loud white noise in one of my classrooms. I am now being CC'd on every email as my work order is being passed around among people and departments and no one wants to do the job. And for every email, more and more people are being CC'd. 😁
I mean, who needs entertainment? Also, this explains SO MUCH about what is going on (or not going on) at this university.
Good news: UC Access Now's work continue to prod a teeny bit of progress from UC, Associated Students, and others.
Bad news: Most of the time we point out injustice & present evidence, we are not invited to the table when it comes to decisionmaking.
Some of the things mentioned here are things the UC Access Now Demandifesto laid out in July of 2020.
Don't let UC or anyone else erase the work UC Access Now has done.They erase the hard work we've done, which encourages burnout. If they're successful erasing grassroots movements, they extinguish desire to organize for positive change that's an equal seat that the table rather than rationed scraps. @disability@academicchatter
@disability@academicchatter The UC Access Demandifesto is up on Internet Archive for all to read. It's easy to see what we were pointing out through the Demandifesto (and subsequent publications via our social media outlets) and what has filtered down into the language of the UC Systemwide Advisory Workgroup on Students with Disabilities to which we were not invited to contribute.
The appropriation and erasure contributed to the burnout (i.e. actual worsening of health) by core working members of UC Access Now. Don't let them erase our work.
We'd write the Demandifesto a bit differently now. Within months after publishing it, we called for the dismantling of the offices of rationing accessibility that UC runs.
Gov. Newsom proclaimed today Ed Roberts Day, recognizing late UC Berkeley alum and disability activist Ed Roberts.
Good time to email or call the Governor asking why he hasn't responded to the hundreds of emails sent in 2020 on asking him to read and enact the Demandifesto Action Steps. University of California needs to dismantle its systemic ableism!
Although UC and the State of California love to pay tribute to Ed Roberts now that he's no longer alive to keep needling them, our state is still ableist as hell and disabled people are being prevented from going to UC and driven out if they manage to get in.
The UC Access Now Demandifesto was sent to the Governor, the Regents, and the chancellor of every UC campus in July of 2020. Few have responded and none have moved on the Demandifesto Action Steps.
If you're not serious about dismantling ableism, you shouldn't be trying to cover it up with Ed Roberts' name and achievements.
In interviews, in press, University of California will pretend they're all about diversity, equity, and inclusion. That they're not ableist.
UCSF is a campus that trains medical professionals - precisely the people disabled people are sent to to "prove" we are disabled.
UC President Michael Drake claims he cares about disabled people because he's a doctor. UCSF should be the least ableist place in UC, right?
The job spec gives away what UC's real concern is. Note that the person in this position will have online accessibility while most of the UC disabled community will be refused this.
Application period for student regent opened up. Applications due by March 11.
"The selected student regent will serve next year for a one-year, nonvoting term as regent-designate, which is followed by a one-year, full-voting term through 2026. The regent represents the student bodies across all 10 UC campuses, and UC undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to apply, with the deadline being March 11.
The first two roles of the student regent listed on the application flier are representing the UC’s 294,000 students as a voting member and influencing a variety of policies regarding students’ experiences. All tuition and fees for the selected regent will be waived, and they earn a stipend while serving on the board."
When UC Access Now first began, not a single UC Twitter account was using alt text, nor supplying captions for videos that needed them (let alone audio description).
UC Access Now folks emailed the Governor, Regents and all Chancellors to read the Demandifesto. The UC Access Now account publicly pointed out the lack of accessible communication every time we saw it. UC accts started adding these things, never acknowledging that it was in the response to UC Access Now's work.
UCSC is on Mastodon. And we're back to images without alt text again. Which reveals what it's really about for UC - not actual change, not actually serving a public which includes disabled people, but appearing to have changed but continuing to embrace ableism.
It's time for UC to embrace the Demandifesto Action Steps, including an accessible communications workflow as a matter of course.
Question for the in-the-know union folks (with background first): I'm pro-union, but my experience as a disabled worker in UAW 2865 was one of the most awful experiences of betrayal and abuse I've ever experienced in any field. Which union you're in and what their culture is matters.
Since a number of grad workers are trying to unionize, it might be good to talk about which unions currently have the most honest democratic cultures you know of? #Labor#HigherEd#UCAccessNow@academicchatter
"Brooke Wilkinson, director of academic initiatives within the Division of Undergraduate Education, said she also consulted disability studies programs at other universities and drew upon the expertise and research interests of faculty at UCLA.
Marks and Wilkinson, both professors involved in adding the disability studies major in the fall, said they also considered topics that are increasingly discussed in society.
“(There was) a sense that disability, civil rights and disability justice had become not only a campus issue and not only a legal issue but part of our social discourse in a very profound way.” Marks said."
LOL at email for course "aimed at graduate students and postdocs" about how to teach...as if most of the professors didn't also need this... @academicchatter
#HigherEd folks: Please consider signing and widely sharing this letter re long-term ceasefire & just solution in #Gaza with university colleagues in New England, ideally before 10am on Monday Dec. 4, which is when it will be sent to US Senators representing New England states. The form will continue collecting signatures thereafter.
Note that signatories do NOT have to be US citizens, but must be a resident of CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, or VT.
#HigherEd folks: Please consider signing and widely sharing this letter re long-term ceasefire & just solution in Gaza with university colleagues in New England, ideally before 10am on Monday Dec. 4, which is when it will be sent to US Senators representing New England states. The form will continue collecting signatures thereafter.
Note that signatories do NOT have to be US citizens, but must be a resident of CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, or VT.
Heartbreaking article about #WVU selling out its future. Land grant universities tap into deep reserves of talent that are shut out of elite private schools. They played a critical role in the development of the US into a 20th century superpower. Now, we run universities like money-making enterprises - selling cheap products at inflated prices and wonder why the public questions our value. Shame on Gordon Gee and all like him. #highered#math#STEM@academicchatterhttps://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/an-academic-transformation-takes-on-the-math-department
If only LA Times and other California papers would cover UC's systemic ableism. Sure, folks fought for a Disability Studies program, but that still leaves the systemic ableism within the University of California untouched.
"When Paul Devlin was in high school applying for a university place, he noticed a grammatical error in a rejection letter sent to him by Harvard. He had no choice but to reject their rejection. The event was so therapeutic that Paul then decided to respond to all universities’ rejections..."