An open letter to the DB community: Dear DB Community, I am frustrated to observe that the DB community chose to attack each other on the basis of visual ranges. I have Usher Syndrome and I can see just fine. You are not DB enough until you have no visual amounts left and you use tactile. You are lying, you are not DB, you still drive! Why is the DB community pointing their fingers at each other about who can see the bestest and most? I have a wonderful friend, Heather Grizzle, who serve as our Senator for the student organization on disability advocacy on the campus as D*. The major duty of a Senator is to serve as a liaison between the organization and Student Body Government of Gallaudet University. Last semester, Heather made a great contribution with the involvement of D* to fight for accessibility at events, which led to the establishment of the Accessibility Guideline for all Gallaudet events, both on and off the campus. This Guideline benefits all students who identify as having a disability, which includes DB people. It was a success at the close of the Fall semester 2013. A brief history about the organization: The officers were contemplating about the organization name and we finally agreed on deciding on D*. We did not want to rank the disability and since Deaf and Disability begins with, to state the obvious, a D. It was also observed that the asterisk is used in the Trans* community to signify ALL varieties of trans-identified people. Therefore, the asterisk was included to signify ALL varieties of disabled-identified people. One may ask why not Deaf*? A valid question. However, D* represents the disability community on the campus, which also includes Hearing people who are disabled-identified, nullifying the purpose of using Deaf*. Now for somebody who has done so much for the D* community at Gallaudet, why are we pointing our fingers at her as being not DB enough? What is the criteria of being a DB person? Who decides the criteria to be DB-identified? What are the values of the DB community? Let me ask you: Which is more important- Isolating and sending someone into an exile just because they have more visual amounts than others OR learning to work together to achieve the greater purpose of the DB community? If the community choses the former, the DB community is at a loss while we can opportune for a greater benefit in advocacy with larger number of people. If the community choses the latter, the DB community will find themselves in a much better position. If driving is not the issue within the DB community, then what really is the issue with Heather Grizzle while she has done so much for the DB community at Gallaudet and elsewhere. If there is an issue that you want to discuss with Heather, she welcome your input and feedback. Another thing to keep in mind, Heather has Aspergers, in which there will be frequent meltdowns. For the past few years, I observed that chaos endure when Heather become involved with discussions. People with Aspergers are known to be very blunt through email communications, resulting in frequent misunderstandings and miscommunication. So since then, Heather has not been given a chance to explain herself. People gasp at her emails and scot away into hiding. Her communication is not intend to put anyone down or insult anyone. She only intends to provide feedback for the betterment of the DB community. Remember, some people with Aspergers have different communication styles, as the DB people do, and as do the rest of us. We have to learn to work together for the betterment of the DB community rather than putting one person at a stake for wishing to do the better for the DB community. Thank you, Sarah McMillen
Posted on: Fri, 24 Jan 2014 07:33:47 +0000
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