Equality by degrees
Disability Rights
Equality by degrees: a place on the platform
|
OCCASIONAL ADDRESS TO GRADUATION CEREMONY 13 April 2000 Graeme Innes |
 |
Chancellor, Members of academic staff, Guests, and most importantly new Graduates:
I'm honoured to give this address. I completed my law degree at this university, and well remember the December day in 1977 when I received it. It was the culmination of four years of hard work, experiencing the pleasures and trials of campus life, and acquiring - as well as a reasonable amount of legal knowledge - a much broader appreciation of the world around me, warts and all.
I can imagine your feelings as graduates - relief, the glow of satisfaction, and the excitement and trepidation of putting your knowledge to work in the world outside academia. I can also imagine how proud those of you who are family members and close friends must feel. You know that now there is family life after a university degree.
As a Sydney University graduate, I am allowed a short time for reminiscing. However, the vice-chancellor's hand is poised over the buzzer, so I'll stop.
Who was Rosa Parkes? Perhaps recollection would improve if I said that she refused to sit at the back of the bus? In the 60's various governments in the United States spent millions of dollars providing a public transport system, but in many places if you were black you could only ride at the back. Rosa Parkes action was the catalyst for the the civil rights movement.
In the 60s and 70s Aboriginal people were allowed to drink in hotels, but only in the public bar. Sadly, in more isolated areas, this continued well into the 80s and 90s.
In the 50's and 60's women were not allowed in to the public bars of hotels. They could go into the lounge, or the ladies lounge.
Late last century, and in some places during this century, women were not allowed to vote. And again in some places it is less than 100 years since women have been allowed to receive a university education.
Of course, if these things occurred today we would be outraged.
These types of discrimination have been stopped by changes of community attitudes, reinforced by State and Federal legislation.
The example of women's access to the public bar is an interesting one, though, because unlike most of the others it was often justified on the basis that "ladies" should not have to put up with the indelicacies that occurred there. In other words, it was "for their own good" and done as a very patronising form of exclusion. This is exactly the type of exclusion which people with a disability have suffered for many years and sadly, unlike gender and race discrimination, we still have a long way to go to redress it.
Let me tell you a story. Bradley Kinsela, like many of you today, completed his degree in human services, in the social sciences school of Queensland University of Technology in 1997.
QUT conducted its degree ceremonies in the Brisbane Concert Hall. It is a tiered venue, and the graduands walk down steps to their seats in the front row at the commencement of the ceremony. They then walk up steps to the platform where they receive their degrees, and back down steps when they have finished. There is no other access to the hall or the platform.
Bradley uses a wheelchair. The only way in which he could participate in the ceremony was to sit backstage whilst his colleagues walked in and sat in the hall, come on to the stage to receive his degree, and then go and sit backstage again.
Bradley's course co-ordinator wrote to the university in 1994 pointing out that if the university wanted to fully include students with a disability this issue would need to be addressed. The Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act had been passed in 1992, and similar Queensland legislation followed several years later. No action was taken.
Bradley lodged a complaint under the Disability Discrimination Act. In her decision on that complaint, hearing commissioner Roslyn Atkinson said in part:
"The end product of any university education is expected to be a degree or diploma, undergraduate or postgraduate, and universities have traditionally had degree awarding ceremonies to recognise the students. .. The ceremonies are usually very moving for the family and friends of the graduating students, and the last opportunity where the student group is together as a student group."
She went on:
"If the venue is changed Mr Kinsela will be able to participate in the processionary and recessionary marches. He will be able to sit with his fellow graduands during the graduation ceremony, and he will be able to progress with his fellow graduands from the body of the hall to the stage for the actual presentation of the degree. These, for the reasons I set out earlier, are not trivial matters, and all go to the undoubted goals of the Act - inclusiveness, accessibility and availability."
Commissioner Atkinson found the complaint substantiated, and directed QUT to provide facilities for the complainant s graduation ceremony that would enable him to participate in the same way that any able-bodied person would participate.
Perhaps by now you understand why I am speaking from this level when everyone else has spoken from up there. I could, if I chose, walk up these stairs in the same way as most of you. But I am not prepared, as a matter of principle, to speak from a platform which excludes people with mobility disabilities. I cannot support an attitude which means that Rosa doesn't just sit at the back of the bus but can't get on it.
I am particularly saddened to be making these remarks because I too am a graduate of this University. And I do not suggest that the university has made no effort to make its facilities accessible to people with disabilities. I know that in this year s budget three quarters of a million dollars was spent on making campus facilities accessible. I know too that a disability liason officer is employed to ensure that these issues are addressed. But these ceremonies are the public face of the University, and the celebration of students ultimate achievements. To prevent students from accessing the stage, and to single them out as different by having them receive their degrees down here, and not up there, is to not fully include them as part of the university community. To not include students with a disability in this part of the process is just like banning them from the public bar, or keeping them off the bus.
All right, you might say, as new graduates, what's this bloke on about. He's made his point about access, but what has that got to do with us? The university's tardiness is not our fault?
Well my answer to you is that, as graduates in the school of health and leisure sciences, the message of inclusion has got everything to do with you, and it is that message that I would like you to take away from this ceremony, along with the well justified pride and pleasure you have in obtaining your degree.
Where and how a person receives their degree is just one example of the much broader problem of exclusion that people with a disability face every day of their lives. It is often done with the best of intentions, but the way to hell is paved with good intentions.
People with disabilities have been institutionalised for years - and some still are - with the justification that "it is the best place for them" or "they wouldn't survive in the community".
People with disabilities have been sent to work in sheltered workshops, receiving in a week what some of us receive in an hour, because "they are happier with their own kind". When national unemployment sits around 7% the rate for people with a disability is about 70% : 10 times the national average. People with disabilities are described in conversation and in the media as sufferers, as incredibly brave, or as achieving against the odds. These perceived bestowings of praise are compromised, because they are patronising and reinforce the charity mentality.
The power of people with disabilities is constantly taken away, and we have to fight to retain it. We are often prevented from taking what others perceive to be dangerous risks in the name of our own protection; limited in our expectations in the guise of reality; and given narrowed alternatives for the rest of our lives in the guise of good professional advice. And if these things are challenged then we have a chip on our shoulder, or we're not professionally qualified so we wouldn't know.
You may say this is extreme: I don't think so. I was amazed last year - when Bruce Maguire lodged a successful discrimination complaint against SOCOG for not providing the Olympic ticket book in Braille - how many people said to me "why would you want the ticket book in braille anyway- what's the point of you going to the events if you can't see them". As an avid cricket-goer all of my life I found this view incomprehensible. If you just wanted to see the games you'd get a much better view on television. After all, isn't the SOCOG message "there's nothing like being there".
I agree that attitudes are changing, but the pendulum has a long way to swing. You can help to increase the momentum of that swing.
Some of you have already started in that direction. Some of you have, in your last year, spent time working in India and Fiji with community groups - using your knowledge and training to support and empower both individuals and the communities in which they live. Others in the area of aged care, have worked in the community to develop people's leisure needs within that community - further empowerment. Some of you have chosen to apply your knowledge and experience, as the holders of human movement, education or psychology qualifications, to the masters degree in occupational therapy. Such skill mixes can provide you with the capacity to both empower your clients, and change the attitudes of those around them, so that less limits are placed on the clients with disability who you support. Some students, as part of their course, have - through the NSW sports council for people with disabilities- buddied themselves with people with brain injury to participate in community leisure activities.
Such positive role modelling can have very beneficial effects.
A course such as yours now goes beyond rehabilitation and provides you with the skills to support people to do better, and to do the things that they would like to do. This, too, provides you with a unique opportunity to become agents of change. You will also have the chance to be proactive in supporting the need for physical and other access to all aspects of community life.
Of course these opportunities are not without their difficulty.
You will need to seriously consider balancing the issues of service provision and advocacy, and your personal stand will probably have an impact on the direction your career will take. The two are not always mutually exclusive, but the line between them, and the placing of allegances day by day to clients, employers, and your profession will probably cause as many sleepless nights as the study you had to do to get this degree in the first place.
I'll conclude my remarks now, because I know that there are many family members and friends who can't wait to bestow on these newly qualified people the congratulations your achievements have justly earned. And may I take this chance to add my good wishes.
But I'd like to throw out some challenges. I challenge Sydney University to make the changes necessary to fully include all of its students in the ceremony which celebrates the peak of their learning achievements - let Rosa on to the bus.
And I challenge you graduates to set as one of your professional goals supporting people with a disability gain full participation and equality. Meeting these challenges will not just benefit people with a disability. As with the progress towards race and gender equality they will improve the quality of the whole community.