Cecil-Lemkin 1 Restrictions on Language for a Disabled Graduate - PDF document

Cecil-Lemkin 1 Restrictions on Language for a Disabled Graduate Student Ellen Cecil-Lemkin • Florida State University • emc15j@my.fsu.edu As a graduate student who has a disability, I must constantly negotiate whether I will “out” myself as being disabled. This act is particularly contentious because I have an invisible disability (generalized anxiety disorder with panic symptoms and major depression), which is often met with stigma. That stigma could have others read me as unfit for academic work because of my “tumultuous” mental state or have me seen as lazy for not meeting deadlines or completing the same amount of work as my colleagues. For example, I am in my third year of my PhD program and everyone in my cohort has completed their prelims… except me. I’m still trucking along trying to complete my prelim readings as I battle anxiety, depression, panic attacks, switching medications, withdrawal symptoms, etcetera etcetera etcetra. Even with the contextual factors, I could easily be read as a lazy graduate student using my disability as an excuse. On top of all of that, I have additional stigma place upon me because I depend upon the emotional support and services I receive from both my emotional support animal, Maple, and service dog in training, Rosie. My companion animals assist me in managing my anxiety and deescalating my panic attacks, as such, they are crucial components in maintaining a healthy mental state. Unfortunately, current discourse around emotional support animals or ESAs often position users as not “disabled enough” and “gamers of the system” who just want to be able to bring their pet into places they shouldn’t be—like airplanes. This positioning poses challenges for me as I attempt to navigate new spaces and decide whether to “out” myself. Before I began training my service dog, it was easy for me to pass as abled and I had the agency to determine when and how I would identify myself as disabled. However, outing oneself is both emotionally taxing and risky. Regardless, I often feel both compelled and obligated to do so, because my work in disability studies has shown the societal benefits of being open with my diagnosis and advocating for myself. The overall belief is that doing so will lead to a more accessible and accommodating system for people with disabilities in the future. Nevertheless, it is still an extremely uncomfortable position to place myself in. I foreground my presentation with my disabled identity because I’d like to discuss how graduate students’ language is restricted when they advocate for disability-related accommodations. Doing so, I believe, will show some of the challenges disabled graduate students face when outing themselves as disabled and advocating for reasonable accommodations, and to illustrate how the far the field still needs to go for equitable treatment for disabled scholars. To accomplish this, I’d like to share with you a story featuring Maple and myself, where I attempted to gain accommodations at an in-field conference. But, before I delve into that, I’d like to pause and differentiate between ESAs and service animals, since I have found that many do not know the differences between the two and this contextualization will help us better understand the following narrative. An ESA is an animal that provides emotional support to a disabled person. The animal is not trained to perform any specific tasks, it is not trained in public access, and it cannot go into buildings where animals are not typically permitted. However, according to the Fair Housing Act, ESAs are allowed access to housing and hotels where animals may not usually be allowed as long as you provide documentation from a mental health service provider. And, as we have learned from extensive news coverage, ESAs are permitted to travel aboard aircrafts, sometimes without an additional traveling fee. On the other hand, service animals, as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act, are “any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability […] The work or tasks performed by a service animal must be directly related to the individual’s disability. […] The crime deterrent effects of an

Cecil-Lemkin 2 animal ́ s presence and the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks for the purposes of this definition” (ADA 33). Service animals do not require any documentation or registration to enter into public spaces and legally there are only two questions someone can ask about a service animal. One, “Is this a service animal?” and two, “What tasks are they trained to perform?” That’s it. So, to summarize, ESA are much more regulated and restricted than service animals. ESAs are not trained in a specific task and they need to be prescribed by a mental health service provider. But both help disabled people enormously, but in distinctly different ways. Okay, so back to my story. To begin with, I was accepted to a conference that provided on-campus housing for a much smaller fee than the local hotels charged. As a graduate student, I was immediately drawn to this option because of my limited access to travel funding. I emailed the women in charge of the on-campus housing and explained that I would be traveling with a documented ESA. She emailed me back to inform me that, regardless of my documentation, the on-campus housing did not allow pets. When I read the email, I felt frustrated, hurt, and—of course—anxious. I knew traveling to the conference would be nearly impossible for me if I did not have my ESA with me. Consequently, I immediately reached out to my major professor for guidance, Michael Neal. After I finished explaining my situation, Michael recommended that I contact the chair of the conference to see if she would help advocate for me. He cautioned me, though, in how I worded my request, since I was a graduate student and stepping on people’s toes could negatively impact me when I entered the job market. This suggestion—to move cautiously around those with power—is advice that I know many graduate students have received and it’s not something that just disabled graduate students have to navigate. It is a position that many of us are placed in. Don’t rock the boat. But, this is particularly tricky when your existence as a disabled academic creates waves by disrupting a system that wasn’t made to support you. The academic institution, while attempting to make necessary shifts, is still primarily centered around the white, heterosexual, upper- middle class, male, and abled body/minds. Michael also recommended that he talk to two of the senior Rhetoric and Composition faculty members to make sure that going to the chair of the conference was the correct move to make. Looking back over the emails I sent to Michael, I’m reminded that it took us over a week to connect with the senior faculty and to write several drafts of the email to the chair. Here’s what the email ended up saying: I'm emailing you about the conference in regards to an accessibility issue that I thought you would like to be aware about. I am a Rhetoric and Composition graduate student at Florida State University and I identify as having Generalized Anxiety Disorder with panic-like symptoms. Part of my routine to manage my anxiety and panic symptoms involves traveling with my emotional support animal, a dog by the name of Maple. Just in case you're unaware, emotional support animals are animals that provide comfort and support in forms of affection and companionship for an individual suffering from various mental and emotional conditions. To get to the point, this year I will be presenting and attending the conference. As such, I was hoping to make reservations with the on-campus housing. Therefore, I emailed Ms. X to inquiry about housing and to find out what type of documentation they would need to verify that Maple is, in fact, my emotional support animal. However, Ms. X informed me that they would not accommodate Maple and me regardless of my documentation. I found this to be rather disheartening, so I began to look into some alternative options. However, these accommodations are either far away or outside of my budget as a graduate student. As such, I would