By Monica Johnstone, PhD
Director of CLAS Communications and Advancement

Looking out over the impressive 8:30 a.m. audience of students at the GVSU Teach In panel discussion on invisible disabilities, I had one wish— that there were faculty to hear what was about to be said.

The Teach In was very well attended, but simultaneous sessions and other commitments always mean that we can’t make it to everything.  I hope that in some small way, through the generosity of the three student panelists and Chemistry faculty member John Bender, I can recreate some of what the panel expressed.

First an admission; I am old enough to have gone to see the 1973 release of The Paper Chase in which John Houseman vividly portrayed an exacting and stern law school professor compete with starched shirt, patrician speech patterns, and bow tie.  Merciless as he was in his classroom full of young/white/male students in cord jackets and aviator glasses, I secretly loved that atmosphere of rigor and accountability which he demanded as his due.  You could almost smell the polished wood surfaces and tweed and elite privilege.

Forty-five years later, the students in that class look materially different from our current reality, and John Houseman is looking pedagogically unsound.  What arguably worked for his audience then was predicated on their assumed privilege to study without the pressures of outside obligations or serious health concerns.

Now we pride ourselves on accommodating service animals and a wide range of needs detailed in letters from Disability Support Resources.  The next level of challenges may be less apparent.

John Bender offered this perspective: "As a faculty member with a mitigating medical disability (diabetes), navigating the Allendale campus during work is much more time-consuming and fraught with dietary/social constraints than most.  However, as a senior faculty member, I am also empowered to lobby and act on behalf of those who easily cannot: our students, and pre-tenure junior faculty colleagues.  Where possible, I advocate where they cannot, and do so sincerely, from the perspective of my own disability.  No one can see the hours per day I spend simply managing my medical condition, yet I count on the university to have reasonable accommodation made for all campus members, and for my faculty colleagues to extend professional accommodation where they otherwise would not understand how I need to spend my work time differently."

The students on the panel detailed the stress imposed by a system designed for students carrying 15 credits when faced with the challenges of an autoimmune disease that necessitated the surgical removal of her colon, of autism, of cystic fibrosis.  They admirably detailed their daunting circumstances and their undaunted aspirations.

My contribution to the invisible disability panel was to speak to the constraints of the rather ubiquitous joint replacements that can make an elevator outage or fire drill the cause of additional physical therapy.  What I didn’t foresee was how much of a hurdle a staircase was for two students on the panel as well.  Though both outwardly look as hearty as their peers, both were actively trying to manage their academic day so that it did not leave them profoundly exhausted. 

All worried what their professors thought when they had to leave the room in the middle of class, when they started to nod off, when they coughed disruptively, when they preferred to work alone.  They all knew that it is easy to jump to conclusions, but weighed that against divulging their disability to every professor, even the ones who took off points for every absence.

Listening to the real experiences of the panelists, I found myself recommitting to being something very unlike John Houseman in my teaching.  I must not read as disrespect or bad planning that a student must leave the room unexpectedly.  I need to remember that the student nodding off is not always partying too hard, but is just as likely to be an athlete who has already been to two hours of practice before my 8:30 a.m. class or is attempting to work second shift and go to college or has an exhausting medical condition, and fights every day to get an education anyway.  I have to make sure I don’t confuse the valiant for villains.  Recalibrate I must to be rigorous and accountable to the students rather than they to me. 

If I retain wistfulness about the bygone era I can always wear corduroy and pretend that corde du roi is not a false etymology after all.