As campuses across the country have returned to in-person education this fall, requests by faculty for accommodations have been routinely ignored or denied. So for our first episode for Season 2, we reached out to three members of the Accessible Campus Action Alliance (ACAA), an organization of disability studies scholars and activists that has called on universities to do better with their statement “Beyond High Risk,” first released back in June of 2020 and updated in July of 2021.

Aimi Hamraie, Jonathan Sterne & Bess Williamson challenge the celebration of being “back to normal” and the failing accommodations systems that have put financial considerations over the safety of faculty and students.

Our hosts learn that the very technologies that made teaching online possible last year arose from the needs and responses of the disabled community. But now that universities are pushing in-person instruction, administrations are refusing access to them.

In the final segment, Jonathan, Bess, and Aimi discuss what it would mean to build institutions imbued with an ethic of care that recognizes our mutual vulnerability and dependency.

For more information on the ACAA, read their statement and follow them on Twitter.

Accessible Campus Action Alliance (2021), "Beyond 'High-Risk': Update for 2021," https://bit.ly/accesscampusalliance.

@accesscampus

About our guests

Aimi Hamraie is Associate Professor of Medicine, Health, & Society and American Studies at Vanderbilt University and director of the Critical Design Lab.

Jonathan Sterne is Professor and James McGill Chair in Culture and Technology in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. His book Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment will be available in January 2022.

@jonathansterne

Bess Williamson is Associate Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

@besswww

Collegeland is produced and edited by Craig Eley and Jade Iseri-Ramos

Research assistance and publicity by Danyel Ferrari

Theme music by Josh Wilson

Show cover art by Margaux Parker

Episode cover art designed by erhui1979 on iStock

A special thanks to the North Carolina Humanities Council and the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies for their support.

Want to get in touch? Email us at collegelandpod@gmail.com or send us a voice memo on Anchor.fm.

Episode 6: Food Insecurity on Campus

CollegelandBy CollegelandMar 12, 2021