Tag: Accessibility

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Concordia Student Union News

Concordia students’ access to legal services on campus threatened

Archived photo by Catherine Reynolds / The Concordian

Without notice, the Concordia Student Union (CSU) executive team motioned to terminate Concordia University’s Legal Information Clinic (LIC) and replace it with a private plan provided by the Alliance pour la Santé Étudiante au Québec (AESQ) insurance association on Jan. 26. This decision will drastically affect students’ access to legal information and support, creating significant barriers for women, English-speakers, immigrants, racialized individuals, and people living with disabilities.

“I think this is one of the worst ideas I’ve seen coming out of the CSU. Students will be losers if this proposal goes forward,” said John Hutton, the former CSU Finance Coordinator of 2018-2019.

The weeks following the CSU’s decision were met with intense backlash from supporters of the clinic from organizations such as the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR) and Concordia University’s International Student’s Office (ISO), along with lawyers, volunteers, and students. 

The LIC put forth their counter-motion on Feb. 14 to be voted on and a settlement was not met. A resolution putting the clinic in a state of limbo was put into place and the CSU has yet to publicly release its response, leaving the clinic’s fate up in the air.

According to Ken Downe, who represents the Concordia Arts and Science Federation of Associations (ASFA) on the CSU’s council of representatives, the CSU executives were asked on Feb. 14 why they decided to opt for a privatized plan and quickly brushed concerns and questions aside.

“They didn’t ever answer what their intention was, originally. They hadn’t prepared anything official,” they said. “The CSU isn’t acting in good faith, there’s no transparency and we don’t know what their exact proposal was going to be. We don’t know their reasoning for that.”

Many holistic services provided by the current LIC won’t be included in the new ASEQ insurance. This will make it more difficult for students to navigate their legal issues, especially for non-French speakers. CRARR Executive Director Fo Niemi says that people who file claims to immigration or the Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST) without the LIC’s help could be rejected due to poorly drafted complaints.

“A lot of students don’t understand the language, structure, law, system, and worse than that, there’s a lot of pressure to get a quick settlement,” Niemi said. “Under this new plan, students won’t be properly advised. They won’t get much out of these processes.” 

The LIC has helped and referred students to CRARR several times over the past 15 years, such as in the race and gender-based discrimination, and sexual harassment case of Mei Ling, a former ASFA vice-president. In the ASEQ plan, sexual harassment cases aren’t covered. This furthers CRARR’s concern about society’s trend of the increased industry takeover of privatizing public services.

“It has an impact on who gets access to justice,” Niemi said.

The LIC is a free service that gives students access to legal information, referrals, and accompaniment in both French and English. Their team strives to provide students with the best possible resources and options that will aid individuals in making the most suitable decision regarding legal issues. The LIC’s goal is to inform students on how to get the fairest treatment available under the law.

“The LIC doesn’t offer representation, that’s not our mandate. It’s to offer information and support to empower students as legal actors. When we are being asked to compare ourselves to a private insurance plan, it’s false equivalency and it’s not fair to what we do,” said Hannah Deegan, a lawyer who supervises the law student volunteers on a part-time basis at the clinic.

“The clinic is about helping students in the moment and taking the time to help them develop better reflexes about how the legal system works because nobody teaches you how to do that,” Deegan said.

Esther Chu was one of the many students that the LIC empowered. Last September, the LIC reached out to inform her that she wouldn’t be eligible to apply for a permanent residency anymore via the Programme de l’expérience québécoise (PEQ) due to the National Assembly of Quebec’s drastic language requirement changes to the program.

The LIC took swift action, gathered students to contest the Quebec government’s decision and invited Chu to testify. Because of this, students like Chu who were part of the PEQ program and didn’t meet the new language requirements, remained eligible until November 2024. 

“I was very touched by the LIC’s proactive solution-oriented support to the international student community in Concordia. If the LIC closes, it will be a devastating loss,” Chu said.

Downe says that due to the ambiguous nature of CSU’s policies, the CSU executives thought it was in their power to make this kind of decision. However, to remove the fee levy that funds the LIC, there would have to be a referendum to remove the clinic. 

“Within the CSU policy it’s unclear whether the executives can change the services without removing the fee levy and holding a referendum, and there are gaps in the policy that allow things like this to happen,” Downe said. “The bureaucracy of the CSU is its downfall. It’s not well connected to students and direct democracy isn’t there.”

The current fee levy for the LIC is $0.28 per credit or about $8.40 per academic year per undergrad student. The ASEQ Studentcare Legal Care Program’s first proposal to Concordia, which was rejected in March 2021, had a price of $25.00 per academic year per student. Former CSU Executive John Hutton believes that if the ASEQ plan is adopted, the LIC won’t be the only non-profit service to go. 

“Students will be paying more, get less and be very poorly served because community non-profit legal clinics have fundamentally different approaches than for-profit insurance companies. I see this threatening all the service centers,” Hutton said. “The ASEQ’s proposal mentions things like supporting students who face tenant issues. That’s the HOJO’s [Housing and Job Resource Centre] territory. Why wouldn’t ASEQ be like ‘Hey, we can do the work of HOJO too’?”

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News

The end of the volunteer note-taking program continues to negatively affect students with disabilities

Although the program hasn’t been operational since the start of the pandemic, the return to in-person classes is making note-taking services even more necessary for students with disabilities.

As students head into Concordia’s first finals session since their return to campus, many students with disabilities are facing an uphill battle. The university has not reinstated its peer-run note-taking program, leaving those who relied on Zoom transcripts for a year in the dark.

University Spokesperson Vannina Maestracci expanded on the Access Centre for Students with Disabilities’ (ACSD) decision to end the program. “During the winter of 2020, the ACSD completed a review of its service offerings and the peer note-taking program was ended for a number of reasons mostly related to the difficulty in finding reliable peer (or volunteer) note-takers as matches.”

Kaity Brady, a fourth-year student who deals with cystic fibrosis and is registered with the ACSD, is not impressed with the university’s handling of her health and safety needs.

“Because of my medical condition, I have to miss a lot of class due to chronic pain. It wasn’t an issue last year because I was already home,” she said. When asked about safety concerns, Brady had some choice words for the school.

“Do you really think the Hall Building is the safest place for me to be when the school won’t even enforce a vaccine mandate? I would feel safer in my journalism classes in the CJ building, but something as big as Hall? I feel way less safe. I also want to point out that for some disabled students, going back in person has been very beneficial. But because my issue really is physical, it’s been a challenge. I didn’t think they could do it, but Concordia found another way to disappoint me.”

Maestracci confirmed that students registered with the ACSD were notified about this change last year. However, the situation regarding in-person classes was radically different in the summer of 2020 than in the fall of 2021. As of September 2021, Concordia has implemented a hybrid teaching method that combines online classes with in-person ones. Students who relied on lecture transcripts automatically produced by programs like Zoom only have that luxury if their classes happen to be virtual. Every faculty within Concordia has been abiding by the university’s general health and safety guidelines, but some have been more cautious than others.

Brady can attest that before the note-taking service was taken away, the quality was not great. “It really wasn’t fantastic, but it was better than nothing. Now school has never been more inaccessible for me.” One of Concordia’s main reasons for the suspension of the program, as pointed out by Maestracci, was mostly due to a lack of reliable peer notetakers.

Maestracci added that “Students registered with the ACSD can still request professional note-taking at the beginning of the semester, if they face barriers related to written output or accessing print or visual information, for example. Each student’s request is reviewed on a case-by-case basis and when deemed as a reasonable accommodation, the ACSD will hire and pay a professional note-taker for that student.”

In the coming weeks, thousands of students will be entering exam periods in order to complete their fall 2021 semester. The community of students with disabilities who relied on note-takers could face additional obstacles in the final sprint to the academic finish line.

 

Graphic by Madeline Schmidt

Edit: A paraphrased comment by Vannina Maestracci in this article was corrected

Children with special needs must not be neglected by our education system

Now almost a year into a pandemic, educators are giving their best to the students that need it most

While many students of all ages are struggling to adjust, students with learning and language disabilities are struggling even more.

With varying measures set into place regarding the introduction of elementary students back into schools across the country, there are discrepancies. Every school board is left to set things up their own way. Though many school boards have made it a priority to allow students with special needs to return to the classroom, other boards across the country have not even mentioned this aspect of schooling.

In the Ottawa Carleton District School board (OCDSB) for example, educators are giving their best efforts for these students, offering parents either in-class learning for specialized program classes, or a virtual version of the classes through Ottawa Carleton Virtual (OCV). Nick Jiminez, a speech language pathologist, has been working with the OCDSB for nearly three years.

“I don’t think anything special is happening for the kids with learning disabilities who are at home.”

Conversely, there are a variety of different situations that show these students to need to work from home, but as Connie Allen, Ottawa-based speech language pathologist, puts it, “Think about the child that’s four [years old], would you have them watch a PowerPoint?”

To that extent, for the children who do learn from home, “Ideally there is a parent at home or a caregiver in a daycare facility who is able to monitor one or more children while they receive remote learning,” said Jiminez.

While the ideal situation for these students is to have an adult with them to facilitate at-home learning, the reality is that this is not always possible. What works for one family may not apply to another.

Families are being forced to try and make choices between safety and education, and these are not always easy choices to make.

I think it’s okay for families to do what they can to make it work. We will do our best to make it successful, balancing that engagement with family stress,” said Allen. “We don’t want to cause our families stress.”

For many of these kids, the developmental assistance they get from these specialized program classes and systems are invaluable. These programs can range from learning literacy, to independence, to getting dressed, and even more. In many cases, it can be difficult to learn and interact with a laptop for these adapted curriculums.

“They are dealing with fatigue from looking at a screen all day,” said Jiminez.

What has become the norm for learning at home, having students spread across different households, may work for the average student. However, children with attention disorders or sensory needs are more susceptible to distraction while at home.

“The demands for self-control are greater when there are lots of distractions close by,” said Jiminez

In the past year, the debate on school closures has been tossed around for all students, yet there are some students for whom it is not feasible to learn at home. For students on the autism spectrum, nonverbal kids and those with cognitive disabilities, they benefit most from in-person learning where they are able to receive the attention they require.

Allowing these kids to learn in person ensures they are given the best attention, but safety concerns surrounding in-person learning have remained imminent throughout the pandemic. For many of these children, wearing a mask is not always possible, for reasons such as sensory difficulties , varying levels of cognitive development and the inability to comprehend why they need to wear it.

With the situation imperfect as it may be, educators and staff have all been learning on the fly, and trying to adapt as best as possible.

“[School] staff [are] doing absolutely everything they can both at school and online to make it successful. It’s a team effort,” said Allen. With the end of the 2021 school year on the horizon, hope can be held that safe and calculated returns can be made for these students, and the general population as well.

 

Graphic by @the.beta.lab

Categories
Student Life

Concordia, I love you, but you’re bringing me down

Concordia’s new online system glosses over student needs

Concordia is asking students to invest in a community which has largely abandoned lofty goals of equitable access, in favour of a new remote model which fails to meet student needs.

When the pandemic began, I didn’t have a lot of time on my hands, and I certainly didn’t have a lot of resources to manage my mental health. I was working part-time as a barista near campus, attending school full-time, and struggling to balance a relationship and extracurriculars on top of it all. I honestly hadn’t heard about COVID-19 until it came up in a class discussion about whether we would be transitioning to online classes. To say it was a wake-up call is an understatement.

In the months that followed, I would lose my barista job, end my relationship, my internship would be cancelled, and plans for a summer directed study with my favourite professor would disappear with the melting snow. My life, previously entirely defined by school, my work, and my relationships with my peers and mentors, has completely changed; and I’m not the only one. COVID-19 has had far reaching impacts on every aspect of life, including the mental health of staff and students alike.

Concordia has made a lot of promises since the pandemic hit, jumping into action with a public relations response that has left many feeling disappointed with the reality of online classes as the fall semester begins. Access has become a positive buzzword that many universities have been utilizing to frame this transition to digital learning — but what is access, really?

Access can be understood as the absence of barriers; it is active in its commitment to enabling success through resolving conflicts with diverse strategies. What does access look like in an academic institution? This is a question universities have been struggling to address since long before the pandemic began.

Concordia has always had issues with creating access. Concordia’s Access Centre for Students with Disabilities (ACSD) is designed to aid this problem, but there are barriers to the average student’s ability to become registered with the centre. The ACSD requires official documentation for medical conditions, mental health conditions, attention deficit disorder, and learning disabilities. Many Concordia students come from outside of the province or country, and do not have access to their family doctor. Students are encouraged to use Health Services, but wait times create barriers to getting the assistance and support they need. In an emergency, students can pay out of pocket to visit a local doctor, but that creates an additional financial barrier to getting the support needed.

I am lucky to have had a diagnosis for my mental illnesses before coming to Concordia, and registering with the ACSD was relatively easy. The ACSD guarantees a certain level of support and protection, but the process of registering, on top of struggling with school work and the additional stress of being in crisis can create additional inhibitors to success. While the university continues to pilot programs intended to support students, they do not have the capacity to support the sheer number of students that require assistance. I fear for the possibility of how students will be impacted by this lack of mental health resources, and the ways in which remote learning will absolve Concordia’s responsibility to student’s mental health.

Administrative response to the rising pressure to reduce tuition fees and address issues of fiscal access was the introduction of Concordia’s COVID-19 Student Emergency Relief Fund. Concordia invested $1 million to create this fund, though, given the university had 46,000 students in the 2019-2020 annual year, this would be equivalent to roughly $21.74 per student. The school is encouraging donations from the community to support this fund, while the university president receives a salary equivalent to the Prime Minister of Canada.

The official administrative response to general inquiry into the preservation of regular tuition fees is that remote courses are being designed to “the highest possible pedagogical standards” and that students will have access to academic advising and one-on-one mentoring, resources which were available prior to COVID-19.

Remote access is theoretically liberating, but the reality of virtual learning is much more complex than what the university administration is addressing. How are students with inadequate access to wifi supposed to access course materials? How is Concordia supporting the many students who cannot afford rent and no longer have a designated learning space? What about parents struggling to manage the responsibilities of their own education while homeschooling their children? What is Concordia doing to incorporate these access needs into the university’s “high pedagogical standards?”

Myself, like a number of other students, considered not returning to school this year. I considered the possibility of taking time off from school, focusing on work, but unfortunately this is not a reality I can afford; I do not have a choice. Concordia is reliant on students like me to continue enrolling so that the school can pay its necessary fees and salaries. I’d be happy to continue contributing to supporting my community, if only I felt more valued rather than a resentful prisoner to the new order of things. It’s possible to have successful remote learning, but the plans put forward by Concordia do not warrant the claim of “accessibility” that the administration is purporting.

 

Graphic by Rose-Marie Dion @the.beta.lab

Categories
Arts

Accessibility, experimentation and self-determination

Open Action Night offers artists a safe space to share their work

Full disclosure: When Lorenza Mezzapelle (Assistant Arts Editor) pitched Chloë Lalonde (Arts Editor) her story ideas for this week, saying she wanted to reach out to the students who started Open Action Night, Chloë laughed – the exact text reads “Omg I am ded. I started open action night.” 

Painting, sculpture and film are prominent in the Montreal art scene, but where does one go to casually watch or engage in performance art?

Concordia students Merlin Heintzman Hope and Chloë Lalonde are hoping to change that with a new series called Open Action Night. Similarly to an open mic, participants are invited to sign up and perform anything.

“I think a lot of people want to see performance happening,” said Heintzman Hope, adding that most often, with the desire to perform comes an intensive application process, documentation, propositions, and juries, or alternatively, grading. “It’s not for visibility but rather, ‘oh I have these ideas, I have this live art work that benefits from being in front of people, and I want to be able to showcase it somewhere.’”

“Community-based and socially engaged artwork is a big focus for us,” said Heintzman Hope. “We started working together because we wanted to have more of that.” 

With a focus on building a community around performance, Open Action Night aims to be accessible and inclusive. “We want to emphasize the child-friendliness of [the space],” said Lalonde.

“We think about age accessibility and would like that to be more of a thing, where art is for all people, where it should be,” said Heintzman Hope. “It should go for much older folk, it should go for children.”

While there are no confines as to what one can present, performers are asked to be mindful of their work, in an effort to create a safe-space.

“People should be considerate,” explained Lalonde. “They should think about what they would feel comfortable having a child witness.” Moreover, performers are expected to trigger-warn their work.

 “There’s a space out there where you can feel at liberty to try things in front of a supportive community,” said Heintzman Hope.

As practicing artists, Heintzman Hope, a Painting and Drawing student, and Lalonde, an Art Education and Anthropology student, aim to draw inspiration from, and bring their practice into, the live sessions.

“Accessibility has been a consideration of mine, which ties into my practice in a few different ways,” said Heintzman Hope. “I’m a student-parent and the range of events that I can go to with my family is pretty narrow, particularly at school.” Heintzman Hope aims to share this personal experience, towards allowing for a more accessible and community-oriented space.

On the other hand, Lalonde aims to further her practice through observation. “I’m synaesthetic and I get a lot of sensation in colour, so it’s an experiment for me,” said Lalonde, who is interested in drawing sounds and movement. “If there’s nobody there, there’s also that idea of drawing the sounds of silence.” Synaesthesia is a trait that merges multiple senses, for example, someone with synaesthesia may be able to hear colors or see sound.

Described by Heintzman Hope as a space for artistic determination, Open Action Night creates an environment for performers to experience live art, or experiment with their own practice. Artists are invited to alter space, test out a new piece, or reperform an old one.

“It’s a real try space,” said Heintzman Hope. “If people want to show something rough, try something completely new, or if they don’t have a piece but they have a method of working.” He added that performers are welcome to work with instructions, in the dark, or to create a no-talking zone.

But there’s more to the project than just Open Action Night. Lalonde and Heintzman Hope have upcoming performance-related projects in the works.

“Should they know what it leads to?” asked Lalonde. “Is it too soon?”

“They should know that there are secrets,” added Heintzman Hope. ”It’s called Sessions Aléatoires, and we’ll find different ways to rope in artists into different risky schemes that have children involved.”

The next Open Action Night will take place on Dec. 12, beginning at 6 p.m., at the old Cafe X (VA-229), in the VA building. Further information about upcoming projects can be found on Facebook and Instagram (@sessions_aleatoires.) 

 

Feature photo: Balancing a spoon – Philippe Tremblay.

Photos by Cecilia Piga.

Categories
Arts

Feeling, touching, and hearing performance art

Art is and, for the most part, always has been a feast for the eyes. It is delightful to look at a painting and recognize the emotion in the subject’s facial expression, to experience a multicoloured light show at a concert, and to watch costumes glittering as dancers sway and leap during a performance. But what if you could not see? How does one experience art if they cannot see?

Blindfolds are required throughout the performance and audience members are directed through the performance, through touch, music, and narration.

This is a question that Audrey-Anne Bouchard wants to answer. Bouchard is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, and professor at Concordia and the National Theatre School of Canada. Her latest show camille: un rendez-vous au délà du visuel is currently being presented at Montréal, Arts Interculturels (MAI) in the Plateau.

“I asked myself, what do people who cannot see at all retain from a dance performance or theatre?” said Bouchard. “They were telling me that they are always aware that [they are] missing a part of the show, so I came up with the hope of creating a piece where they wouldn’t be missing anything.”

camille: au délà du visuel, a performance piece which tells the story of a loss of friendship, aims to create an immersive, multi-sensory experience.

“I knew from the very beginning that [the show] was going to be immersive,” said Bouchard. “For me, it meant that the spectator would be immersed in the set of the piece; they would be able to understand through space, touch, sound, and texture, the environment in which it takes place.”

Inspired by her own disability, Bouchard created au délà du visuel, or beyond sight, a project aiming to enable a new audience－one who normally wouldn’t be able to access theatre and dance shows－to experience performance art.

“[The loss of my eyesight] came very progressively,” explained Bouchard, who suffers from Stargardt’s disease. “I started losing sight when I was around 17 but it took several months before they could find out what the origin of the problem was.”

Bouchard, who has always worked within the performing arts, noted that it only occurred to her about 10 years after the fact that her practice is very visual.

“It’s interesting because I created a job for myself where I can work with my eyes closed; I created a context where my disability is not a disability at all,” she said. ‘“I did a lot of research on the visual aspect of theatre and dance and I realized that this is kind of a paradox, that I’m losing sight and working with such a visual discipline.”

This inspired Bouchard to further her research and discover what it is that artists share through their art that does not necessarily have to be shared through sight.

“It was obvious then that the piece had to be immersive,” explained Bouchard. “To share with people, I need to be close with my performers.”

camille: au délà du visuel allows for the spectator to be fully immersed in the set, alongside the performers. Blindfolds are required for those without any visual impairments and audience members are directed through the performance, through touch, music, and narration.

“We also welcome people who have different kinds of disabilities,” said Bouchard. “We can guide you through a show if you’re in a wheelchair.”

Bouchard noted that the distance between the stage and the audience is what makes performance art very visual, by default.

“If we eliminate that distance then we have access to all of [the spectators’] tools,” she explained. “[We had to find out] how can you share the performance of an actor when you don’t see him.”

The development of the project took over three years and was very theoretical. “We created a new creative process methodology with this project,” Bouchard said. Through working with people who are visually-impaired and through research, Bouchard created a new way to work.

“To share with people, I need to be close with my performers,” explained Bouchard.

This new process methodology inspired Bouchard and the team of performers and artists she works with to develop a series of workshops.

“We designed a workshop to teach students or other artists how to work that way,” Bouchard said. “I think that now we have to keep working and creating work altogether for an audience living with visual disabilities and other disabilities that we would like to address as well.” Bouchard’s workshops, which will be both interactive and theoretical, are in the works and will be further developed over the course of the upcoming year.

“I see a desire from the arts consult to encourage more accessibility […] to all kinds of audiences who don’t normally have access to the arts,” said Bouchard. “It is becoming more and more present, and it’s changing. I’m benefiting from it, but I’m also hoping to help make it happen in the future; I hope that my work is also a great example of how the creative process that we use everyday works, but that there are so many other ways to create art that can be explored.”

camille: un rendez-vous au délà du visuel is being presented until Sept. 22, at Montréal, arts interculturels, at 3680 Jeanne-Mance St., suite 103. Further details regarding showtimes can be found at www.m-a-i.qc.ca

 

Photos courtesy of Laurence Gagnon Lefebvre

Categories
Student Life

Slice of Life: Peeing in peace

Graphic by @spooky_soda.

It shouldn’t be so hard to make washrooms gender-neutral on campus

Ah, gender-neutral washrooms: so controversial (sigh), yet so simple. News flash! Everyone has a gender-neutral washroom in their home, and everyone deserves access to a facility that suits their needs. But the call for more gender-neutral washrooms goes far beyond that. It’s about advocating for the right to feel safe in a washroom—a right cisgender people often don’t think about.

Many ideological and physical constructs of society, right down to the way washrooms are designed, exclude many LGBTQ+ members. Non-binary people having to choose between ticking off ‘male’ or ‘female’ on certain forms; trans people having to choose which washroom to use—or choose to not use the washroom altogether—are all examples of these exclusionary structures.

D.T, a trans advocate and public educator for the Centre for Gender Advocacy, said it’s hard to pinpoint the exact number and location of accessible gender-neutral washrooms across the Concordia campuses. “I also have a problem with ‘single-stalled’ washrooms in general,” said D.T. “Why do we have to exclude ourselves, and further isolate ourselves?”

Ella Webber, a trans student at Concordia, said they found a list of gender-neutral washrooms on the Centre for Gender Advocacy website. It also has information about other resources available to trans and non-binary students, both at Concordia and around Montreal. “Concordia never mentioned that in [the] orientation which I went to,” said Webber. D.T. explained that the list on the centre’s website hasn’t been updated since 2016 and doesn’t account for construction on campus that may bar accessibility. “I think at orientation we should be notified about Concordia’s queer facilities like [the centre] and their resources,” said Webber. “When I do find [gender-neutral washrooms] it’s super helpful, and so much more comfortable for me as a trans person.”

Personally, I know there are single-stalled gender-neutral washrooms on the Loyola campus on the second floor of the CC building, in the Hive Café, and in the basement of the CJ building. D.T. informed me that, in the H building on the downtown campus, Reggies bar, the other Hive Café, plus the 5th, 7th and 10th floors, all have gender-neutral washrooms as well (although, due to construction on the 7th floor, the washroom is currently inaccessible—same goes for the VA building).

D.T. and the centre described the H building as extremely problematic in terms of accessibility, one of the reasons being that many of the single-stalled gender-neutral washrooms in the building are shared with wheelchair users. This means they are only accessible with an access code or key provided by the security desk on the first floor (not where the washrooms are). Trans and non binary students not only have to locate the gender-neutral washrooms that are actually open on all of three floors in the Hall building (total number of floors is 12), and plan to get the necessary key or access code, but, after all that, once at the security desk, they may be asked to justify their needs to the security officer. “They run the risk of being outed and asked intensive questions,” she said. “It’s super shitty.”

D.T. met with Andrew Woodall, the Dean of Students, a few months ago to communicate the centre’s goals—both short and long-term—for the gender-neutral washrooms project. Short term, they would like to see three types of washrooms: an all-gender washroom available to everyone, trans or not, regardless of their gender identity and expression; a men’s washroom for men, male-identifying or transmasculine persons; and a women’s washroom for women, female-identifying or transfeminine persons, explained D. T.

Long term, the centre would like all washrooms to be gender-neutral, thus “respecting everyone’s right to choose the washroom that is appropriate for them.” While Woodall was very supportive of the centre’s project and their demands, he said these changes would take time. “The centre is not satisfied with this response,” said D.T. She also explained how something as simple as changing signage to actually indicate whether a washroom is gender-neutral helps increase accessibility and awareness. “We don’t want only promises,” she said. “We would like the university to put a concrete plan in place to get us to our goal.”

I’m a big fan of the ‘my rights end where your rights begin’ logic, so let’s talk privilege for a second. Do you navigate your days thinking about where the next available and safe washroom is? Do you mediate your liquid intake so you don’t have to go as frequently? If you answered ‘no’ to the above, I’d suggest rethinking the privilege—yes privilege—you have of simply using a washroom. Everyone should be able to pee in peace.

Feature graphic by @spooky_soda

Updated on Jan. 9. 2024

In the original version of the article, one of the two sources was named fully. One of the sources has since requested to be left anonymous.

Categories
Arts

Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes

Exhibit makes you understand what living with a disability is really like

A big part of the way we live our lives is a question of perspective.  How do you see yourself, the people surrounding you and what you do with what you have? What we call empathy is one of the most beautiful and crucial emotions that human beings are capable of.  Yet, we often forget to think about how other people perceive and live through our world.

See ____ through my eyes tried to palliate to this scarcity of shared understanding. The exhibit organized by Concordia’s Access Centre for Students with Disabilities (ACSD) presented a unique way to get a glimpse into someone else’s way of life. The artists were all Concordia students registered with the ACSD. Together, they created a mosaic of testimonies about how they experience life–probably a little differently than others. Still, messages of hope and determination that were associated with the photos and pieces of art showed that most of them did not let their disabilities define who they are.

The artists presented understandings of their own disabilities. Photo by Frédéric T. Muckle.

What could have been an exhibit about difficulties and differences turned out to be more of an affirmation of one simple fact of life: how you are born and how you grow up to be should not define who you are; the way you see and live your life should.

As Paul Tshuma, one of the artists of the exhibit, explained in a note by his art, “I may be disabled, but my ability to live life to the fullest is not limited.”

Still, various parts of the exhibition showed and described how certain disabilities may affect one’s day-to-day routine.

It may be confusion for some, others may have trouble with daily tasks, and some may be forced to continuously adapt to their illness.

Nonetheless, most of these statements also bring up one very important necessity: one should never be determined by his or her disability.

After all, are we not all subject to bad experiences in our lives? This does not mean that the weight and seriousness of a disability or illness can be lessened by the everyday anxieties of the average John and Jane Doe.  But in the end, it is possible for anybody to overcome a problem with a bit of help and a lot of determination.

To quote artist Christina Tricarico, “you determine your path, not your disability.”

See ____ through my eyes made an attempt of raising awareness by allowing the people concerned by these issues to share what it really is like dealing with a disability or an illness. It successfully achieves its goal.  It also was definitely more creative and enjoyable for the viewer than dry descriptions and numbers explained by people in white blouses. Fortunately, this kind of participatory creative project seems to be a growing trend, according to the ACSD.

The exhibition can also be seen simply as an opportunity for students to express themselves. Painting, photography and writing can allow the artist inside us a way to better understand ourselves. It also can be used as a form of catharsis. It can help us live through difficult moments of our lives. People need ways to deal with reality, and art, in all its forms, can help.

Azalia Shahidi Kaviani successfully described this in the note accompanying her work: “I found deep peace in my heart in art. That is also one of the reasons why I started to paint. When I paint, I feel like flying like a bird in the heavens.”

Let’s be honest, at some point in our lives we all deserve to be able to let go. Especially when you are a living example of courage and determination, just like the talented artists of See ____ through my eyes.

For more information about Concordia’s Access Centre for Students and possible upcoming events, visit the concordia.ca/students/accessibility.

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