thursday, feb. 29, 2024
celebrating 120 years
free
N • Living document
C • Grand Kyiv’s ‘Giselle’
S • Rising the ranks
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Mayor Ben Walsh spoke at an informational open house Wednesday evening about its Community Grid Vision Plan.
Ukrainian “Giselle” ballet ran in Syracuse at the Palace Theater for one night only. The ballet company was founded in 2014.
Syracuse assistant Brenden Straughn’s reputation in the DMV promises to extend SU’s evergreen recruiting pipeline.
Mixed messages Despite decades of research against facilitated communication, SU continues to promote the intervention By Kyle Chouinard
F
managing editor
acilitated communication is supposed to help non-verbal people with disabilities communicate when they otherwise have not been able to. In a typical use of FC, the “facilitator” provides physical support for the “user,” sometimes by holding their wrist or other body part, as they point to a keyboard or other device. FC’s main issue, however, according to numerous researchers and decades of studies, is that what is ultimately typed is not the thoughts of the person pointing. The facilitator, likely unintentionally, is the one controlling the message, said Ralf Schlosser, a professor of communication sciences and disorders at Northeastern University. Despite research dubbing facilitated communication as pseudoscientific dating as far back as 1995 and a Daily Orange investigation into FC in 2016, Syracuse University continues to provide training and proliferate information on FC through the Center on Disability and Inclusion’s Inclusion and Communication Initiatives. James Todd, a professor of psychology at Eastern Michigan University, called the intervention’s continued existence at SU a “major embarrassment.” “The ethical thing to do for the folks who are promoting this is to sit down and go, ‘We failed. We’ve been promoting something for decades that doesn’t work. We need to stop drawing in vulnerable parents with vulnerable children,’” Todd said. “Because no ethical clinician would foist pseudoscience on that kind of population.” Schlosser authored two systematic reviews of facilitated communication — one published in 2014 and another in 2018. Results of the 2014 review indicated “unequivocal evidence for facilitator control” and that “FC is a technique that has no validity.” In another review, Schlosser examined a study from Finland that had 11 children who use FC complete a
bridget overby presentation director
series of tasks like “object naming” and “reading.” For “object naming,” when the facilitator working with the students could physically see the object, the students collectively went 33-for-36, answering 92% of the questions correctly. When the facilitator could not see the object, the success rate fell to 2%. The disconnect between the results of numerous studies and some facilitators legitimately believing they are not authoring what is spelled out is likely due to the ideomotor effect, said Jason Travers, a professor of special education and applied behavior analysis at Temple University. The effect, which is also used to explain how Ouija boards work, is the tendency of people’s bodies to behave inconsistently with mental intention or without attention and mental effort, Travers said. Since 2020, SU’s ICI has hosted eight workshops on facilitated communication for potential facilitators. The two-day workshop, according to its event page on SU’s community calendar, “provides the opportunity to learn the techniques necessary to be a facilitator.” While the event page refers to the practice as “Typing to Communicate,” this phrase is used synonymously with facilitated communication on the ICI’s website. Along with the event itself, ICI staff work with participants to create a plan “for continued support” after the workshop, according to the calendar
page. It costs $100 to attend the virtual workshop, though there is no additional cost for a user to work with a paying facilitator during the sessions. Outside of scheduled training, the ICI also offers practice rooms with technology and “on hand” staff for $20 per hour-long session. The next workshop is scheduled for March 25. Katharine Beals, an adjunct professor in Drexel University’s Autism Program, said that while she sees charging money to learn FC as “unethical,” she has become jaded to situations similar to SU’s. “Nothing surprises me about the power of wishful thinking over evidence and also the behavior of people who want to sell something,” Beals said. “Unfortunately, I think this has become a very common practice in this country.” Schlosser, having similar concerns, said it is unethical to act as if FC’s validity is still up for debate. “It is not,” Schlosser said. “It is clear who the author is and it’s definitely not ethical to continue.” The D.O. sent a series of questions to the ICI ranging from the content of its workshops to how SU works to ensure that what’s being communicated through FC is from the user. The ICI did not answer The D.O.’s questions, instead opting to send a comment stating that the university is see communication page 6
on campus
Advocacy interwoven within Disability Studies program history By Kyle Chouinard managing editor
Editor’s Note: This article references historical documents and organizations related to disability, some of which contain mentions of slurs against people with disabilities. Mercy Xie, a student in the Syracuse University Disability Law and Policy Program, said she has familiarized herself with two major models of disability: the medical model and the
social model. As put by Xie, the difference is that the medical model makes a disabled person’s body the issue while the social model makes the lack of accommodations in society the issue. Growing up in China after losing one of her legs below the knee, she said the emphasis on the medical model made her feel like a burden to her family and school. At SU, however, Xie has examined herself through the lens of disability studies. “Disability Studies has really
empowered me for many years,” Xie said. When SU’s School of Education established its Disability Studies program in 1994, it was the first of its kind nationally. With the Americans with Disabilities Act being only 4-years-old and deinstitutionalization — through the closure of largely inhumane staterun mental health facilities — being realized, the ‘90s were a slate waiting to be rewritten for disability policy. SU community members had
worked for decades prior, both in their research and advocacy, to lay the groundwork for the ideas Xie and many other students now study within the university. The mixture of analysis and application of disability studies has stuck throughout the entire program’s existence. Despite its formation in the ‘90s, the principles of disability studies existed for decades earlier. Steven Taylor, who helped establish SU’s program and was named Centennial Pro-
fessor of Disability Studies in 2008, wrote “Before It Had a Name: Exploring the Historical Roots of Disability Studies in Education.” In its foreword, Taylor wrote that the idea of disability as a social phenomenon emerged in at least the 1960s. “To regard disability as a social construction or creation is not to deny human variation,” Taylor wrote. “Variations according to ability do not see disability studies page 7