Last Wednesday, I attended a talk given by Erin M. Sember-Chase, the Assistant Director of Cornell’s Student Disability Services. During this café, we discussed the daily struggles of handicapped people; students also shared their own personal experiences with disability. This chat brought to mind memories of my high school’s treatment of disabled students.

In my high school, students with serious mental/physical handicaps were separated from non-disabled students both by classroom and floor. For class, the disabled students were relegated to the basement, a place to which no one else really ventured. It set up a weirdly segregated environment in which there was this fraction of the school that I essentially never saw. Because I go to a small high school, it was strange and sad at graduation when I did not recognize a few names called to the podium for a diploma. All of these unrecognizable names were the names of disabled students.

Obviously, there needs to be a better system of integration between those with and without disabilities. We need to be exposed to what the real world is like, rather than kept in bubbles not representative of the global population. Integration of non-disabled and disabled students must be carefully and smoothly done, though, as I learned from another student at the café. Her high school used a “shared classroom” system, which put disabled and non-disabled students into the same classroom. The student said that the atmosphere of these classrooms was unsettling and uncomfortable, as teachers created an environment in which they made clear that the disabled students were slower than the non-disabled students, vocally encouraging the non-disabled to help the disabled with the material. This is a lose-lose situation for both sides: Disabled students were made to feel inferior, leading to diminished confidence, feelings of competence, and self-esteem; meanwhile, students who weren’t disabled may have felt they were spending valuable class time helping other students instead of getting the educational support and instruction that they themselves needed. Additionally, they probably felt uncomfortable in these positions of teacher-asserted authority. There needs to be a better system where we can have integration with equality, where everyone gets to feel confident and competent and gets to focus on their own learning.