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Watching accessibility initiatives and disability rights suffer under changing federal policy, Nazafat Jarrin, a J.D. candidate in Syracuse University’s College of Law, wanted to speak up.

During SU’s Disability Pride Month, she saw her chance — organizing Tuesday morning’s Disability Awareness Panel discussion. Speakers highlighted the importance of support from academic institutions and the legal challenges students with disabilities face in accessing accommodations.

Rachel Dubin and Cora True-Frost, two of the featured panelists, shared their personal experiences and legal insights in navigating education for people with disabilities. The two highlighted the challenges people face in education, including finding accommodations, and the need for legal intervention in preventing non-inclusive policy.

“Law really matters, and so the person who is protected needs to understand what their possible accommodations can be legally, and finding that answer can be very difficult for the person who has disabilities and is entitled to these protections,” True-Fost, a professor at the Syracuse College of Law, said.

On March 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order facilitating the closure of the U.S. Department of Education, moving programs under the Individuals with Disability Education Act to the Department of Health and Human Services. With the change, the government views students with disabilities through a medical lens rather than focusing on their success in school.

Dubin, a research and data analyst for the United States House of Representatives, advocates against these restrictive policies before Congress. She has been deaf since she was five and said the biggest challenge for people with disabilities in the classroom is others’ ignorance.

When she was a student, a professor told her to sit in the back of the class so she wouldn’t be a “distraction” to the other students. Dubin said this experience is common for people with disabilities. Educators and administrators must prioritize understanding student’s needs for accommodations, instead of cooperating with the students.

Dubin said she had to learn to advocate for herself without support from her professors. Her experiences motivate her to do the same for others.

“The burden has always been (there) for disabled people,” Dubin said. “We have to help them, we’ve all been in these situations. This burden has to stop.”

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Throughout Tuesday’s discussion, panelists advocated against President Donald Trump’s order shuttering the U.S. Department of Education. Dubin said moving essential accessibility programs out of the DOEd will change the way the government views students with disabilities.

True-Frost’s son has a disability and often finds herself uncovering new information on disability protections and rights. The biggest issue she’s faced is teaching others those protections and obligations.

While acknowledging increased efforts to make school events more accessible, True-Fost said her son still deals with disadvantages when participating. Despite these challenges, she said she has tried to support her son and his peers, calling for automatic door openers at her son’s middle school so he can enter and leave freely.

“We’ve had successes, but we’ve also had failures,” True-Frost said. “I have learned the particular vulnerabilities that disabled students face and the broader implications for our legal understandings of equality and the access that society has actually made.”

Kaitlin Sommer, a J.D. candidate at SU’s College of Law and co-president of the Disability Law Society, moderated the event. She agreed with True-Frost’s point and said her strategy lies in helping others. As a student with a disability, Sommer looks back at the people who’ve fought for disability rights as inspiration to help others today.

“It’s about finding my community, and that’s why events like this are so important to me because I can feel like I’m not normalizing this stuff, but understand that I’m not alone,” Sommer said.

Tuesday’s panel was a part of Syracuse’s Disability Cultural Center’s Disability Pride Month programming. The DCC was established in 2011 through student activism and was one of the first at an American university. The center provides a safe, accessible and inclusive space for students with disabilities, said Harper McKenzie, the program coordinator for the DCC.

The DCC will host events throughout April in celebration of Disability Awareness Month, ending with a graduation celebration on May 3.

“We really try to provide tools, information, support and exposure to disability culture and present new and different ways of looking at disability that people might not be familiar with, so that they can make decisions for themselves about what disability identity means to them,” McKenzie said.

While discussing legislative and institutional reforms for people with disabilities in higher education, Dubin said the federal government is inconsistent in its implementation of IDEA. She expressed concern for disabled Americans’ access to services in the future.

“Given the current political climate, I am very uncertain what legislative reforms could be done,” Dubin said. “This is a scary and strange moment, politically and legislatively speaking. Right now, we don’t have the power to do anything, but we do have the power to do this in terms of this institution.”

Published on April 16, 2025 at 12:27 am
Contact Ally: akgoelz@syr.edu