CUNY Unlimited 3rd Meeting, Fall 2021
The third FIG of the Fall semester 2021 was held on Thursday, Dec. 9th at 10am via zoom. 5 faculty, 3 administrators and 1 undergraduate alum/ disability advocate, together with two Melissa Riggio (MRHEP) students one now an alumni also attended. (students with intellectual disabilities)
Gabrielle Dekki was unable to attend but wrote to update us that travel training for MRHEP students would be taking place on and around campus over the Winter session and that MRHEP were now able to register at the same time as undergrad. students as long as faculty gave permission for them to attend.
Carrie Shockley Director of the CUNY Central Disability office then updated us on the roll out of CUNY Unlimited. (CU) It was explained that CU was a funnel for all applications to go through whether students were applying via MRHEP or CU. Carrie also explained that Hostos was waiting for the Pell Grant to be accepted. (this has since gone through) And once this had been cemented that Kingsborough would hopefully follow suite.
Stella Woodroffe, Director of Accessibility Services then spoke about the history of Disability Awareness Week (DAW) and a discussion followed as to how best we as a FIG could contribute to the D AW in Spring 2022 It was suggested that a panel of FIG members together with Students Unlimited members could lead a discussion after the showing of the film “Opening Doors to College” by Dan Habib, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0BFL9DLk-Q
The short documentary (for faculty) on including students with intellectual disabilities that is being generously worked on by Margot Cole and Carol Carrieli was shared and discussed. The idea of making the film partly on zoom was decided upon which would enable it to be made more economically and quicker as a way to promote CUNY Unlimited at KCC.
The FIG ran overtime towards the end of it an interesting and frank exchange was had between the 2 Melissa Riggio students. One asking of the other whether they had a stutter. It was made clear in the reply that they were fine with this being asked of them, and that they had in fact a speech impairment. This modelled an honest and direct exchange regarding disability for ‘neurotypicals!
The FIG was informative and supportive of members projects. Members were excited at the opportunity to be able to contribute to the Disability Services Disability Week together with Students Unlimited. The FIG has now cemented core members and new members should now be encouraged to join.
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