CUNY Unlimited 2nd Meeting, Fall 2021
On 11/4/21 our FIG hosted a very special guest – Piers Wilkinson, a disability advocate from England to our virtual meeting. Twelve faculty, staff, student alumni, and we were honored to have Carrie Shockley and Jenna Lamm – CUNY Disability Program administrators attend the meeting.
Piers Wilkinson is the former National Union of Students Disabled Students’ Officer before the role was defunded in 2020, and now supports D&A’s work as their Higher Education Policy and Partnerships Lead. Piers has been deeply involved in disabled student representation at all levels for over 6 years, culminating in their election to national representative positions during the last 4 years, and in March 2020 was appointed to the Disabled Students’ Commission as a Student Voice Commissioner.
https://diversityandability.com/team/piers-wilkinson/
Piers has a great sense of humor, and he inquired about our favorite brand of tea along with our intros. Piers then treated us to an amazingly comprehensive history of disability law in England, and where it overlaps and rhymes with U.S. disability history. Although a recurring theme was the U.K. lagging 20 years behind the U.S. in terms of various protections for individuals and especially students with intellectual disabilities. For example there are no programs similar to CUNY Unlimited at Universities in the UK for students with intellectual disabilities to be included. We also saw the English disability law is far older.
Our minds were boggled to learn the first English law relating to disability was passed in 1339! Interestingly, this law protected disabled lords (known as “impotent”) from having their lands stolen while they were temporarily (or perhaps permanently) not able to see to their business. While I cannot do the whole of Piers’ fantastic presentation justice, below are a few notes on some of the older laws that he covered.
1535 – Poor Law Act (only 3 years of protection for “impotent”) non-able-bodied beggars
1774 – Enshrined the medical model, in that now a doctor must certify lunacy for a madhouse (e.g., Bedlam, where we get the adjective today).
1834 – Poor Law Amendment: workhouse conditions for disabled individuals must be worse than the working conditions for other workers.
1845 – Lunacy Act – removed disabled children at young ages from the home, and this could not be challenged by the family or the children themselves.
Idiots, Imbeciles, Lunatics: this disgusting terminology was coded language for late the 19th century. The U.S. equivalent of these were the “Ugly Laws” which prohibited certain disabled children or individuals from being seen in public.
There was a lively discussion following Piers’ presentation, and this included some discussion of employment statistics and support comparing the U.S. and England. We saw that employment rates for disabled people in the US (17%) are far worse than in England (in the 80% range generally), and a lot of this has to do with the fact that England provides money for employers (at least partial payment) for employing people with disabilities while the U.S. does not. In the end, we could agree that both countries have a long way to go in ensuring equitable access to both higher education and employment, and Piers and the others in attendance intend to continue advocating for this in any way we can. We thank Piers for coming and hope to see him again in the future!
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