Yesterday, I filled out the university’s diversity and inclusion climate survey, and when I was done I cried. I wept because every single question was not only painful for me, but I also knew they’d be so for others. Why would a 65-year-old white professor weep? Because I am perhaps the only blind faculty member at SU, and my decade here has been painful. Since I believe racism and all bigotries are intricately connected, I understand the miseries I’ve experienced are broadly felt by those who don’t look like me. 

From unusable software to inaccessible public presentations to biting remarks from staff, life as a disabled person at this university is no picnic. By insisting on access and inclusion, people like me are seen as malcontents, for that’s how structural ableism works. We’re inconveniences, not resources; flies in the ointment, not true members of the campus village. I wept because I know this is how it feels to black students and staff, LGBTQ+ folks, foreign students, women. Like all of you, I know about emotional labor, what it’s like to put on a smiling face against indignities. 

Right now there are solid efforts underway to change things for the better. But I’m taking up my pen to suggest that behind the curtain of a clinical online survey there are tears, lots of them. Let’s try to hear them. 

Stephen Kuusisto

University Professor 

Director of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach at the Burton Blatt Institute