Last week, I attended a Rose Cafe where Erin Sember-Chase from Cornell’s disability service came to talk with us about the prevalence of disability at Cornell. The most surprising fact that I learned from this talk was that the ADA (American Disabilities Act) was only implemented in 1990. That, to me, seemed far too late. However, what was most interesting to me about this talk was the discussion of disabilities at Cornell, particularly those that cannot be physically seen such as academic disabilities. The first that comes to mind is when professors mention that students who need extra time for examinations can be accommodated. Although it is excellent that these kinds of accommodations are provided for people who need it, it is also problematic, in a social sense. There is already a stigma present around disabilities, and when you are singled out for your disability by the means of which you obtain your accommodations, the issue becomes quite contentious. A perfect example of this is when you obtain separate testing accommodations, but then on test day your friends wonder where you were and then you have to explain why you were somewhere else. Some people may feel completely comfortable with this, but others may not. The most important thing that this reveals is that although disabilities are increasingly become more and more normalized, in the sense that people are aware of the vast kinds of disabilities present and the numerous accommodations that can be made for them, they are still something that can cause social distress. Keeping this in mind, it should be our goal to destigamatize disabilities by talking about them more in a positive manner in order to better educate all of society on how to create an environment where people with all kinds of disabilities feel comfortable and welcome, no matter the severity of the disability or whether they even have a disability.