Sharing Space: Neurodiversity in the Classrooms of Bryn Mawr College

College academic life involves taking up space. We fill the silence with spoken “participation,” disrupt blank pages with written words, place our bodies into classrooms, and fill professors’ desks with blue books. At Bryn Mawr, we are, at the end of the day (no matter how much we refuse to talk about it), graded in a way that reflects the space we take up and judged by faculty, staff, and fellow enrolled students that reflects the space we take up. The methods of assessing the space students take up vary, but the tools of judgment that the administration and professors wield bear lasting impact on us. These expectations often do not seem to take into account the complex identities of students, especially erasing the intersection of our academic lives with the other aspects of our lives, like mental disability (Brooke, 141).

Mental disability at Bryn Mawr, when officially marked down as such, goes through Access Services. Accommodations can sometimes be made when everything goes right with the bureaucracy of filing what the college calls an “…impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; has a record of such an impairment; or has been regarded as having an impairment,” a definition that echoes the one found in The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), but puts the stress in its definition on personal “impairment” and leads, through this definition, following explanation, and unwritten standards, to the necessitation of the medicalization of disability to validate both the “impairment” and any disability that is related to it.

We at Bryn Mawr can, once we pay upwards of $3,000 for an evaluation by an “appropriate professional,” which will also require actually subjecting ourselves to an evaluation and getting ourselves to the appointments with the “professional,” (all of which will take about six weeks if we can get in to appointments) can request to get an accommodation (Access Services).

Accommodations like these automatically exclude students on the basis of how the bureaucracy sees them (not on the reality that Mawrtyrs actually live). Accommodations take a long time to get and they are expensive. Getting an accommodation requires jumping through a lot of administrative hoops. Students with mental disabilities can only gain services geared towards helping them access Bryn Mawr’s ableist system by being “received as a valid communicator” by the psychiatrists and college administrators they have to be vetted by in order to gain this access (Price, 27). The process of requesting and (sometimes) obtaining accommodations paradoxically mandates that students searching for help in sharing the space of the classroom must take up much more space. This system assumes a good deal of “normalcy” in lives the bureaucracy paradoxically sees as “abnormal.” In order to acquire an accommodation for a disability, access to money, time, transportation, the knowledge of who to request accommodations from, and the ability to approach administrators all must be present.

I argue that these “accommodations” do not set students on the track to being the best in the class. The way functioning of Bryn Mawr’s space-sharing limits the success stories to a select few. On top of that, the system of “accommodation” does little to challenge the larger power structure of the school is geared towards students who are “neurotypical” and assumes that “normal” status until proven otherwise in a lengthy, difficult process.

To succeed at Bryn Mawr, we as students have to take up space. But, there is not enough space for everyone. The pedagogy of Bryn Mawr classes limits the ability of students to participate.  The idea of participation in class lies in the assumption that all students are rational and will participate in ways that are conducive to the professor’s goals for the course. Faculty might not have student discussion patterns mapped out in an evil lair, but there are expectations that we will stay “on topic” and have the “right attitude.” This applies from everything to test taking to talking in class. Tests must be taken in allotted times (whether extended or not) and our answers to tests must seem fresh to professors—taking up space in their minds where other student responses might have instead. If our class has discussions, we have to show up to class and speak, but not there simply is not enough time for everyone to have enough time to express their ideas, especially if we take longer than other people to get to our points or find a spot in the conversation to slip in. If there is not a set “discussion,” most classes provide some opportunity for students to ask questions, but we have to be able to speak in front of a lot of people, including our professors, to do that and be able to assert that question. (It is very likely that all classes provide some room for questions, but I have neither the time, money, nor energy to take every class offered at Bryn Mawr, and so I cannot say for certain.) To do well, we have to take up space, preferably by challenging the professor’s opinions just a bit. But, in order to do that, a lot of factors have to be in place, because there is not enough space for everybody. The system already does not allow everyone to succeed, even if there was no neurodiversity amongst Mawrtyrs and even if our lives, our privileges, our everything else, were the same.

Access Services makes exceptions to a neurotypical rule, but does not help take down the ableist system that the college runs on. Instead, the office suggests that all of us are “normal.” Mawrtyrs are not taken for their word, but have to prove through medical analysis that they are “off.” The college sometimes allots students extra test time, the option of taking tests in quieter rooms, and permission to record a lecture, in addition to other exceptions. But these are all “accommodations.” A student is considered to be in the wrong, not the system that disables them. In the “Guidelines for Providing Accommodations for Students with Disabilities,” the passage directed towards “Appropriate academic adjustments and reasonable accommodations” stipulates that “The College is not required to make a modification that it can demonstrate would substantially alter an essential element of a College standard, requirement or program” (Guidelines for Providing Accommodations for Students with Disabilities). This narrative is one of bringing students up to a set standard of academic discourse, wherein they can be a part of academia in spite of mental disability. This particular system of accommodation does not reflect the idea that Mawrtyrs can participate in academic life with and through mental disability, nor does it show any movement to change the spaces of Bryn Mawr include of all students, opting to change the Mawrtyrs instead.

Accommodations made within a disabling, dysfunctional system will not provide all of us with the opportunity to pursue “…knowledge as preparation for life and work” (Bryn Mawr). If Bryn Mawr truly “…teaches and values critical, creative and independent habits of thought and expression in an undergraduate liberal arts curriculum…” then it should take a look around at its students and the differences in thought and expression that we already have (Bryn Mawr). Maybe then it will make true “accommodations” by changing the larger system, not just test times.

Bibliography

Alder, Deb. Personal interview. 6 Nov. 2013.

 “Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, as Amended.” Information and Technical Assistance on the Americans with Disabilities Act. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 8 Nov. 2013.

Brooke, Robert. “Underlife and Writing Instruction.” College Composition and Communication 38.2 (1987): 141.

"Bryn Mawr College Mission Statement." Bryn Mawr College. Bryn Mawr College, 1998. Web. 8 Nov. 2013.

"Guidelines for Providing Accommodations." Access Services. Bryn Mawr College, 2013. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.

Price, Margaret. Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2011. Print.