Our Space, Our Choice

Mel Kennedy

Mel expresses her opinion regarding the recent debate over who the Disabled Student Society is for, and the importance of Disabled Spaces at universities

Transcript:

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Mel Kennedy and I’m a final year politics combined student at UCLan. I’m also a member of the Disabled Student Society because I have cerebral palsy.

Today, one of our members created a poll asking whether our private Facebook group should be open to allow everyone to join us and discuss all issues and topics, that they should join us and discuss only disabled issues, or if like it is now, the group should remain for disabled students only.

We’ve been informed by the Student Union that policy states that membership needs to be open for all students. Our one place, the place that we have to safely discuss disabled issues and experiences, has been considered for closing because it does not involve non-disabled students. There is apparently a process of change for this [ineligible] characteristics. We have one space away from other students, we have one space away from non-disabled students, to protest and to have our own experiences and discuss them safely and this has now been considered to be taken away from us.

Personally, I think it’s important for disabled people to have a discussion place away from non-disabled people. This is a group for disabled students, by disabled students and sometimes, it feels like we’re shouting into the void about our issues because we’ve repeatedly [stutters] been ignored by the student union, we’ve been ignored by the university, we are ignored, and you may not think it, we are.

We appreciate that we have allies, but to ask us to remove our safe space is outrageous. We actually removed the words ‘and allies’ for a reason from our society group. We shouldn’t actually even need a safe space - but this is the way society works. We try and set things up, we try and improve things for ourselves and society tries to take it away.

Recently, last July in fact, we created a newsletter about the disability experience with disabled writers as our main team. I’m actually a member of that newsletter. So do we need to close that now or is it acceptable to you because it shows how inspirational we all are, you can use it to show how well your disabled students are doing by protesting for their own issues because apparently, you can’t do that for us, or with us. We can try our best to make something our own, but ultimately you have the power to take it away as soon as it makes you uncomfortable.

The society that we have has always co-operated with others, and this wouldn’t change regardless of whether the group opens or remains closed and exclusive to disabled students. Despite us always standing with others, this has not been the case when WE needed them with our campaigns.

Us having a private group chat has helped many people gain confidence and develop their disabled identity. I’ve seen this personally over the last year with a few of my friends, and I’m so sorry, I suppose I have to them that they aren’t entitled to that anymore, that once again we have to ‘bow down’ to non-disabled people, because our inde- our independent space isn’t good enough.

We already know that there’s no interest in representing us in the Union - we saw that with the elections and your lack of engagement with our Idea to create accessible mandatory training about campaign materials because your campaign materials were not accessible despite us repeatably asking for accessible materials - but, to be honest, it’s good to see the proof of it out in the open, because now we can prove to others exactly what we go through, and exactly why our safe space is necessary, and why our newsletter is necessary for us to have as disabled students.

Thank you for your time and I hope you do appreciate this and actually take action from this because I am not the only person who is angry, there are many of us who are angry, but a lot do not have the voice to give these opinions, but I’m not afraid to, I’m not afraid because disabled students should not be afraid to share their experiences and share their uncomfortable [pause] just to share what they go through with these organisations.