7 Systemic violence and power imbalances
“There are lots of identity categories where people don’t feel entitled to have accommodations…. often that has to do with status, citizenship status, has to do with being racialized.” – Rachel Gorman (faculty) The institutional authority to gatekeep accommodations, assigned to student accessibility services and faculty is a power imbalance that disfavours students. SAS offices hold power over students in their ability to approve academic accommodation applications and determine accommodations. Faculty hold power over students in their ability to deliver academic accommodations and determine students’ grades and academic outcomes. Students are required to evidence their access needs and lived experiences to those who hold institutional power over them in exchange for accommodations and supports.
“I have to educate teachers like on ‘Oh, this is what I need. This is how I work… and sometimes I don’t have time to do that.” – Hodari C. (student) Students are delegitimized as experts on their lived experiences and access needs because of systemic violence and power imbalances. Students repeatedly told us that accommodations were set without their input and that such “cookie cutter” accommodations did not reflect their specific needs and experience. Students also told us that they expend significant labour to educate SAS advisors and faculty about their access needs, sometimes to re-negotiate accommodations that can better meet their needs.
“Super cookie cutter. These are the things we have to offer.” – MD (student) Moreover, academic accommodation systems are, by their very nature, individualized and fragmented. In HEI, access is engaged as an individual problem meriting an individual response (Dolmage, 2017). As a result, access/accommodations become siloed into one office, which in turn diminishes the institutional capacity to respond to ableism (NEADS, 2018).
“Teachers that really felt passionate about their work and the students would make changes in their classroom, but it wasn’t everybody” – AK (Roles). Our findings suggest that the institutional relegation of disability and access as the responsibility of a single student produces, at best, a limited path to academic accommodations, and at worst, reinforces systemic ableism as system-wide interventions are dismissed in favour of individual accommodations. With one narrow path to academic accommodations, students end up walking a tightrope.
“There are times when folks may come to us because of a religious accommodation, or some other sort of accommodation that isn’t disability related. And then we would have to say, ‘that’s not something we can accommodate… You’re going to have to go back to your faculty member’.” – Amanda K. (SAS Officer) In the current system, access-oriented practices are “bolted-on” instead of “built-in” to classroom design and pedagogy. Interviewees emphasized that faculty are left to their own devices without institutional support for implementing access-centered pedagogies as access work is separated from pedagogy.
Individualized and piecemeal approaches to access means inconsistency in the delivery of academic accommodations and supports. Students explained that they receive varying levels of access, ranging from sufficient to grossly insufficient, with no accountability to the student.