Cerebral Palsy: A Conceptual Analysis

I am terrified of storefront windows.

When I accidentally glance into storefront windows, I see a reflection of how I walk. My gait and the resulting walk provide evidence of a lack of oxygen to my brain during my birth—the evidence that I have Cerebral Palsy.

Cerebral Palsy has provided me with a stride that resembles that of a drunk person, a fact that I am regularly reminded of on Friday and Saturday evenings due to living on a college campus. I know that the weekend has come when I see a good portion of the campus walking like me. More disabling than any physical limitations, however, is the stigma I face because of my visible disability. I know that the way that I walk is the first thing that people will notice about me, and it can be
As I prepare to graduate in May from Vanderbilt University, I reflect on my own, a-typical Vanderbilt narrative. Cerebral Palsy does not fit the culture of physical, academic, and social perfection that is borne out of an undergraduate acceptance rate that hovers around ten percent.

There is a sad irony behind the fact that at a university that is home to one of the top special education graduate programs in the country, the only space Vanderbilt dedicates to serving students with disabilities is in the windowless Baker building, a location far removed from campus that primarily houses ancillary functions for the university. The most logical reasoning that I have heard for this is that the university wants to protect the anonymity of students who visit Disability Services. Unfortunately, as a person with a visible disability, I have never had the luxury of hoping that people do not notice the way that I
The staff that work in this office are passionate about helping students with disabilities. Yet, the current arrangement of the student facing aspect of disability services focuses on serving the university and not the students. By having Disability Services Office under EAD, the focus of the office becomes purely about ensuring that the university is meeting all its compliance obligations. This means that disability culture is ignored and most of conversations around disability are confined to community service events and lines on resumes that follow.

Sophomore year, I stood in the lobby of Carmichael Towers and stared at a set of posters. The posters promoted Alternative Spring Break, an opportunity for Vanderbilt students to spend their spring semester working on various community service projects across the country. The posters were hung all around campus. I had participated in one of these service trips the previous year and had enjoyed the opportunity to make deep friendships and do meaningful service. Yet, today I had to