MARCH 16, 2023 VOLUME 116 ISSUE 8
since 1906
'Nobody listens': Inside disabled students’ Western experience LUCAS ARENDER COORDINATING EDITOR
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shton Forrest has been a Western student for almost half of her life. It wasn’t until the diagnosis she received during her fourth year that she understood why many students with disabilities feel they don't belong at Western University. Forrest was quick to speak out once she discovered the accessibility barriers ingrained in the school — from an overwhelmed accommodations system to inaccessible spaces on campus. Eventually, the administration hired her in an accessibility consultant role, but after months of feeling her recommendations were being overlooked, she began to feel tokenized. She believes the school used her “disability, Blackness and femininity” to endorse its accessibility projects. Forrest’s experience, as both a disabled student and an employee of the school, shows Western's struggle to address barriers that continue to exist for students with disabilities on campus. A Western professor’s research showed 60 per cent of disabled students surveyed at the university experience fatigue from trying to navigate campus. A 2021 external review revealed Western had the worst ratio of trained advisors to students with disabilities of any post-secondary school in the country that disclosed their data. Based on interviews with students, advocates and faculty, as well as email correspondence between students and university administrators, this is a portrait of an institution grappling with making the “Western experience” an inclusive one. Forrest is a master’s student, disability advocate and member of London’s mayor’s list of honourees, who came to Western in 2004 as an able-bodied student. Four years into her degree, she was diagnosed with scleroderma, an autoimmune disease that hardens the skin and causes issues with blood vessels and internal organs. The disease damaged Forrest’s lungs, eventually making her rely on a scooter for transportation. Since the diagnosis, she has dedicated her life
SOPHIE BOUQUILLON GAZETTE Ashton Forrest on the Mezzanine level of Weldon Library, March 10, 2023
to eliminating the barriers she discovered as a disabled student. From inaccessible washrooms, classrooms and office spaces, to an an accommodations system that struggles to meet student needs, she says she and other advocates have seen little change over the past decade and a half. Following a critical external report on Western’s accessibility practices in 2021, Forrest was offered a consulting job with the school. She was warned by friends and fellow advocates it was Western’s way of silencing her public criticism of the university. But she wanted to make change from the inside, and ultimately took the job. It didn’t take long for her to realize a seat at the
table doesn’t always mean a voice that is heard. Forrest says that, while Western consulted her, the school often failed to listen to her recommendations. She used the example of the recent D.B. Weldon Library renovations, a project she consulted on, where there remains a number of barriers in the building Western spent $15-million redesigning. Forrest explains that in spite of recommendations to make the washrooms accessible during the stakeholder engagement period, they remain inaccessible to herself and many other students requiring mobility aids. Many washrooms on campus don’t have auto-
mated doors and are inaccessible for students in scooters and wheelchairs. While they may have stalls that are “accessible” inside, the actual entrances to most washrooms on campus remains a barrier. Fourth-year computer science student Alaa Abdulsada, a disabled student who requires a mobility aid, says even the washrooms with accessibility signs above them are not truly accessible. “They put the label of the wheelchairs on [the washrooms]. But there is no door opener,” he CONTINUED ON P4
Muslim students' push for prayer spaces continues JESSICA KIM STAFF REPORTER
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he Undergraduate Engineering Society voted to set up a temporary prayer space in the Claudette Mackay-Lassonde Pavilion at their Mar. 13 meeting — the latest gain in the Muslim Students’ Association’s decades-long advocacy effort for space to practice their faith on campus.
Engineering will be the second faculty at Western University to get a new prayer space this semester, following the Ivey Business School’s Mar. 6 announcement of a new a pilot program for a Muslim prayer space. Before this month, there was only one Muslim prayer space on campus — in the basement of the University Community Centre — and one interfaith prayer space in Middlesex College. This left
some students with classes far from these buildings praying in whatever space was available on campus, regardless of its suitability for religious practice. Finding prayer space has long been a challenge for Muslim Engineering students due to their course load and buildings’ locations. The Gazette reported in February that dozens of Muslim students gather in the Amit Chakma Engineering
Building stairwell and take turns praying in the space at the designated times throughout the day. Mohamed El Dogdog, a second-year software engineering student and one of the students who prayed in the stairwell last month, said the walk from the ACEB to the closest designated prayer room, in the UCC, is “a very, very far trip to go to
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