Friday, April 28, 2006
Photo by Nicoletta Niosi
Fernando Arenas, Medellin, Colombia graduate srudent, struggles to open a door at Wescoe Hall yesterday. Arenas participated in AbleHawks' disability awareness activities. The group tried to raise awareness of disability issues like wheelchair accesibility by having volunteers navigate Wescoe's ramps and entryways in a wheelchair or blindfolded.
AbleHawks gave students a small taste of life with a disability Thursday by experiencing what it is like to be blind. The group provided a blindfold and cane to willing participants.
AbleHawks, an organization aimed at helping students with disabilities, staged a demonstration to raise awareness about disabilities issues on campus and the everyday issues that affect students. From 10 a.m. until 2 p.m., the organization was staked out on Wescoe Beach.
AbleHawks also had wheelchair demonstrations, which showed the inherent difficulties in trying to maneuver in a wheelchair.
“The acceptance level with our group is not the same as with other minority groups,” said, Zach Coble, Winfield sophomore and vice president of AbleHawks.
“I associate myself as a person with a disability, and we want people to feel more comfortable and not make assumptions about people with disabilities.”
Coble said he wanted people to know what people with disabilities go through every day. For example, there are not wheelchair door openers on all the doors in Wescoe Hall, and not all the buses on campus are accessible for people with disabilities, he said.
Derek Zarda, Shawnee junior and president of AbleHawks, said, “We don’t want to build a sense of pity for people with disabilities, but we want to show people what it is like to walk in our shoes.”
The group has been on campus for two years and is open to all KU students. AbleHawks plans to continue holding demonstrations at least once a semester to promote the message of dealing with people with disabilities as a multicultural issue, Zarda said.
“People don’t fear people with disabilities, but they definitely shy away from us,” Zarda said. “We want to get all people interested and open to deal with issues that affect us.”
Carrie Greenwood, who was a guest for the AbleHawks rally and works at the Kansas Youth Empowerment Academy, an organization that works closely with younger individuals with disabilities, said that in order for AbleHawks to achieve its goals they would have to unite and work with people that had disabilities and with those who did not.
— Edited by Jodi Ann Holopirek
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