So, I’ve alluded in the past to a really nasty prof that I once had. I don’t usually trash-talk former professors or employees because, for the most part, I end up getting along with most authority figures. If I don’t, then it’s okay, because I never have to see them again. But I think this case is unique because it had longer-lasting effects than usual, and it’s just such a perfect case study of how hard it is to prove that there is ableism in the academy. If you know anything about this case, please don’t say anything that may reveal my identity.
This is a story about an introductory course that I took during my freshman year in college. Any names that appear are psuedonyms.
First of all, the courses in this department had a cap on class size. To determine who could get in, there was a lottery system.
Because of the lottery system, my access coordinator is not amiable to the idea of scheduling interpreters for a course that may or may not be cancelled. I reach an agreement with her: we will rig the lottery system so that I will automatically be enrolled in the course.
Lesson #1: If the accessibility department has a broken policy, don’t try to go around it – fix it. The student should be treated as much like a non-disabled student as possible, which obviously was not happening here. For example, if this came up at my current school, the lottery system would not have been rigged and my access coordinator would have been open to the idea of cancelling the interpreter assignment if it turned out that I was counted out of the lottery system and therefore had to enroll in a different class.
So, on the first day of classes, Professor Smith has us write our name on slips of paper and then place them into a hat. She leaves the room to draw names at random. She has already been told that I should be included in the class, so she makes sure to draw my name. Then she comes out with a fake smile plastered all over her face and announces who is in the class and who is not.
Lesson #2: If you are in a situation where there is preferential selection, make sure that a disinterested third party is in charge of the selections. If I had the chance to do it over again but still had to rig the lottery system, I would have arranged it so that somebody else would have drawn the names and Prof Smith would have never known that it was fixed in my favor.
Prof Smith sits next to the interpreter. Over the course of the next few weeks, I notice that Prof Smith glares at my interpreter pretty often. My interpreter is respecting Prof Smith’s personal space, but sometimes her signs will enter the corner of Prof Smith’s field of vision. Prof Smith will then glare at my interpreter as if she is annoyed at this invasion of her personal space.
Lesson #3: Pay close attention to how your superiors treat your interpreter, because they will treat you and the interpreter as one and the same person.
During this time, Prof Smith is chilly towards me, but I think nothing of it and assume that she simply is a cold person, nothing more than that. Eventually, the drop date for classes passes and I no longer can drop a class without a penalty.
Lesson #4: Be aware of any sign that people in authority are batshit insane. In the event of batshit insanity, get out of the situation before it is too late.
Then, when it is too late to drop any classes, Prof Smith emails the following people: the access coordinator, my dean, and the head of the department to inform them that I am failing the class. She writes a long hate-filled letter detailing every single little thing I had ever done wrong in her eyes. To add insult to injury, I do not know about this letter – or even about the fact that I am failing the class – until my access coordinator sends the email to me with the note, “Let’s schedule a meeting to discuss this.”
Lesson #5: If you use an interpreter, be absolutely sure to tell your professor/boss who to email in the event that there is a complaint. It is a good idea to get this in writing. For example, my current University requires professors to submit a signed form to the disability center – among other things, it says, “I agree to email the disability center in the event of a complaint.”
When I compose myself enough to read the email, it includes the following complaints:1
- I am not coming to class on time. In reality, I go to a University whose informal policy is that classes start ten minutes late, and I am coming to class on time according to the University culture.
- I am not bringing a notebook to class; therefore, I am not learning anything and I am a horrible and lazy person. In reality, I am bringing a small notebook and I am only taking notes of the things that I do not already know.
- Furthermore, I am not making eye contact with people 100% of the time; therefore, I obviously am not listening to anything that anybody says. In reality, I am taking turns looking at the ASL interpreter, my notebook or course readings, and the person who is talking; I have learned how to do this sort of multi-tasking because I grew up deaf.2
- My interpreter takes up too much space in the classroom. The room is so tiny that it cannot possibly fit ten students, the professor, and the interpreter!
Lesson #6: When dealing with a really nasty boss/professor, follow formal, written policy rather than informal culture.
Lesson #7: A prejudiced professor/boss will project stereotypes on every single thing you do, therefore distorting reality. In this case: deaf people are lazy/dumb; therefore, maxporter is a lazy/dumb person.
Lesson #8: A prejudiced person will underestimate your capabilities.
Lesson #9: A prejudiced person will look for any plausible-sounding excuse to support her opinions. If the physical space were truly a problem, the obvious solution would be to move the class to a different space. But it wasn’t really the problem in this case – Prof Smith probably thought that the best solution to this “problem” would be to remove two people: the interpreter and I.3
After that email, I meet with my access coordinator, who can’t do anything because her hands are tied. Then I meet with my dean, who tells me to “play the school game” and to adopt behaviors that fit Prof Smith’s idea of Being A Serious Student. I do not meet with the head of the department because I do not feel that he should have been involved in the first place.
Lesson #10: Sometimes, the people who are supposed to help you do not help you at all.
Lesson #11: Play the school game. Or, put more broadly, choose your battles. In this case, arguing about the notebook was not as important as addressing the underlying issue of audism.
Lesson #12: If a negative email about you is sent out to more people than it should be sent out to, be sure to meet with every person who got it, not just the ones immediately pertinent to the case.
So I begin to play the school game, as my dean has put it. I still notice tensions, though – and not just with me.
One of the students in the class, who happens to be African American, writes a story told in the first-person point of view. This story is written in very slangy Ebonics / AAVE, but it is a first-person story so that’s OK. It does not break any of the rules put forth in the assignment prompt.
The next day, Prof Smith lectures the class about using “proper English” in the true spirit of Shakespeare. She claims that we cannot learn how to experiment with writing in English unless we first have a good command of “proper English.” She does not mention the student’s story but it’s pretty obvious what sparked this rant.
Lesson #13: Be wary of people who are prejudiced in any manner, since prejudices often travel in packs. A racist or a sexist may not have a problem with me, a white male, but since a lot of prejudice depends upon the idea that there is a hierarchy, it is best to assume that the racist/sexist bigot will likely be an audist or homophobe as well and will therefore consider me inferior.4
A few days later, this student and a biracial student (whose stories about biracial families also sparked critique from Prof Smith) walk with me to the bookstore after class. They ask me if I like Prof. Smith in a tone of voice that indicates that they expect me to say “no.” I say “no” and launch into a ramble about why not. Then I remember myself and ask them if they like her. They say “no” and leave it at that. From that point on, we don’t discuss it anymore.
Lesson #14: Just because you belong in one minority doesn’t mean that people in a different minority will immediately see you as an ally. In this case, I may have been deaf, but I also was very White.
The semester proceeds. Prof Smith likes a few of my pieces, so all is well – kind of. But problems keep arising.
For one assignment, my professor tells me to censor out all of the swear words from the dialogue that I have written. All of my friends warn me that this is following a dangerous road and tell me not to follow her instructions or to replace the swear words with silly words like “flijjamigig!” Instead, I do what Prof Smith has told me to do – I take out all the “shit”s, all the “damn”s, all the “fuck”s, everything. She then berates me for not following directions because I left in some “Jesus Christ”s.
Lesson #15: A censor will stop at nothing, so it’s best not to give in to them.
Lesson #16: If a person is already prejudiced against you, she will find fault everywhere in your work.
Then, for another assignment, I decide to write a story about a trans man with a supportive family visiting his family for Thanksgiving. Great idea, right? Needless to say, it does not go well, and Prof Smith berates me because the supportive family is “unrealistic.” She asks me how on earth I could expect the trans man’s mother to be so supportive after “only” two years of transition.
Lesson #17: Again, see Lesson 12: -isms travel in packs.
Lesson #18: This is why there are not enough positive portrayals of queer people in media: because everyone expects a sob story whenever an artist writes/creates a story about queer people.
Finally, after a lot of gritted teeth and mindless scribbling in my full-size notebook, it is our last meeting. (We had individual conferences with the professors.) She gives me a tight smile and congratulates me on my work, then tells me that I have a great deal of talent. After school is let out for the semester, everyone looks up their grades. My grade: B+.
Lesson #19: If your work is good enough, even the most prejudiced bigot will have to admit that it is good.5
Later on, it is time to sign up for courses for the next semester. When I talk to my access coordinator about signing up for another course in the department, she tells me that the head of the department is very wary of me because of the email that Prof Smith had sent out earlier in the semester. Since the only classes in the department that I am interested in are taught by him, I end up signing up for a film studies course instead. Later, I transfer out of the school altogether.
Lesson #20: Ableism is not something that only happens between you and the ableist – others are watching, as well.
Lesson #21: Ah, fuck it, this is a pretty useless course of study anyway. I’ll pursue it on my own and explore my other interests.
So, yeah. I definitely wasn’t perfect in all aspects of this situation, but it still sucked a lot.
I recently learned that, after this whole situation went down, lottery policy was changed. Students are now selected at the end of a term shortly after they have picked tentative classes for the next semester. That way, if they end up not getting into the course, it is relatively easy to register for a different course because registration period is still open. Plus, the lottery is now anonymous.
Nothing ended up happening to Prof Smith, though. There was no way to prove that she was an audist or racist or any other -ist because it was really easy for her to manipulate the rules and then say, “This student’s work was not up to par.” She also favored people. This made the students afraid to speak out against her, and it made her favorites heap positive praise upon her. To this date, she continues to teach at the same school.
-~-~-~- I think there were more, but this happened a few years ago, and I deleted the email pretty quickly for obvious reasons. Sorry. [↩]
- This actually had already come up a few times in my life, but, prior to this course, teachers expressed genuine concern – “Are you understanding everything OK?” [↩]
- I should give credit for this lesson to a friend who helped me understand it – this friend was a senior and disabled. She pointed out that it was not a valid excuse and, because I was having difficulty understanding the point, she used the example of a student who uses a wheelchair. An ableist professor could as easily have said, “That wheelchair does not fit in this room. Therefore, that student in the wheelchair does not belong in this classroom.” Obviously, deaf people and people who use wheelchairs face different situations, and my friend knew that, but in this case, the analogy was one that I found useful. [↩]
- Besides, if I’m proven wrong in assuming this and the person in fact loves deaf people or something, do I really want to be friends with a bigot? Hell no. [↩]
- Or, more cynically, she may have been fishing for good feedback on the instructor eval form. [↩]
