Student organizations are a staple for socialization on campus, and are often strongly recommended to freshmen beginning their college journey. They can help you find your community and participate on campus while adjusting to the new environment. 

However, student organizations often have many members and are constantly working on new events or adjusting to different changes on campus. This environment can be difficult for students with disabilities to navigate. Through the chaos of recruitment season and leading an organization, the reality is that preparing accommodations for disabilities isn’t at the top of the to-do list if organizations don’t already have members who may need them.

This can leave student organizations unprepared to make their events accessible, causing struggles with communication to ensue. While student organizations undoubtedly rise to the occasion when a member asks for accommodations, it can still be a struggle to deliver. 

Instead of leaving student organizations to tackle this by themselves, the Office of the Dean of Students should offer resources on how to make events accessible and communicate with students with disabilities. 

Sade Dawson-Love, director of Student Activities in the Office of the Dean of Students, elaborated on how Student Activities works with student organizations to plan events through consultations, and the different aspects that are taken into consideration.

“We usually just encourage student organizations to factor in multiple options for accessibility,” said Dawson-Love. 

While many resources are offered on campus, none are mandatory for student organizations, leaving a lot up to groups who may not be well versed in the topic. This leads to uncertainty and confusion that can impact student organization members with disabilities. 

Meghna Kundur, an MIS senior and president of the Texas Lassos explained her experience as president of a student organization and the achievability of accessibility. 

“It would be so helpful to have guidelines for a variety (of disabilities),” said Kundur. “Without that I think we have kind of limited ourselves in becoming as accessible as we could be.” 

While not every organization is going to have a student with disabilities, being prepared and introduced to the concept before the situation arises creates an opportunity to prepare beforehand. This awareness is important for students with disabilities being able to navigate campus and student organizations more easily. 

“Because, of course, this is a general pattern within society, you’re not going to think about something unless it affects you directly,” said Kundur.  “It wasn’t until we began this partnership that I genuinely started seeing the accessibility issues on campus for what they were. I think it shouldn’t have to take that to be aware and to care. And I think guidelines would be a great (solution),  especially if they were made mandatory.”

Dawson-Love addressed the possibility of offering more resources to student organizations, as it’s a topic everyone needs to be made more aware about. 

“I do think that our office can support student organizations by providing some type of resource or platform to educate. I see us being able to host something,” said Dawson-Love. “ I could see us doing a partnership with student emergency services, who do talk to people about preparation for all types of matters.” 

Dawson-Love emphasized that Student Activities is not well-versed in the topic and would need to work with other administrations and mentioned possible solutions like inclusion of accommodations and accessibility in the mandatory annual safety education presentation for student organizations, regardless of whether or not they choose to take the initiative.

While disabilities are not necessarily something that everyone is going to have experience with, being made aware of the topic via a mandatory presentation will help create an easier process and more welcoming space. Inclusivity is important for the community, but can be challenging to fully understand due to the diversity of the student body. The first step is always going to be awareness and education.

Rail is an English second-year from El Paso, Texas.