In Annie Wasinger’s shared office in Rhatigan Student Center room 219, photos of impactful and influential women decorate the walls. Among them is Judy Heumann, the mother of the disability rights movement. While Heumann died in 2023, Wasinger said her resilience still lives on through the work of other disability advocates, such as those who comprise Wichita State’s Accessibility and Disability Pride Task Force.
“Disability is just a divergence,” Wasinger said. “It’s literally just diversity, and all diversity is good, just as we would accept diversity in thought or ethnicity or belief or race, (or) sexuality, we should accept diversity and the form of ability, and I don’t think that that limits anybody in any way.”
The task force is made up of members of Disability Rights, Education, Activism and Mentoring (DREAM), WSU professors, representatives from the Office of Student Accommodations & Testing (OSAT) and Courtney McHenry, who leads WSU’s Office of Civil Rights, Title IX & ADA Compliance (CTAC).
Since the group’s formation last year, representatives have met a few times this semester to create recommendations to present to the Student Government Association and Faculty Senate on how to enhance disability accommodations on campus. And with local, state and federal administrations threatening to undo decades of work accomplished through disability advocacy, Wasinger — who serves as the student advocate and SGA liaison — and the task force are strategizing as to how they will preserve disability rights at Wichita State.
“The disability community has always been at odds with (pressure from the local or state level). We’ve always had to fight to receive accommodations,” Wasinger said. “We’re (the task force) called to more than just abiding by a procedure or being in code. I think that’s really making the difference on campus.”
That includes adding an amendment to The Student Bill of Rights to cement the protections offered under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Earlier this year, 17 states, including Kansas, filed a lawsuit — Texas v. Becerra — to eliminate this section that protects people with disabilities from discrimination. Wasinger said that, initially, she and SGA Sen. Andrew Hatch were going to propose a resolution to condemn Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach’s involvement in the suit.
“We were kind of preparing to, you know, make phone calls and just kind of get at Kobach’s office that way,” Wasinger said. “… Our disability community is great, and they were really flooding those AG (attorney general) lines. And now it kind of has seemed that those attorney generals are backing off and kind of just stated that they are not trying to declare 504 unconstitutional as a whole.”
The unprecedented suit, however, inspired Wasinger and Hatch to build disability protections into WSU’s 57-year-old safeguarding document, which has only been updated twice before.
“We recognize that, you know, politics are fluid. Everything’s fluid, and whether or not it was intentional, there was a direct attack on 504,” Wasinger said. “… So we’re working on that just kind of a backup plan to make sure that those rights are enshrined somewhere in our organization, and we’re not just leaving it up to the federal guidelines.”
The goal is to enshrine the same concepts included in Section 504, like guaranteeing access for anyone with a disability to the university’s procedures, buildings, committees and activities, but without using the same verbiage. It will also defend funding for disability-based services like OSAT.
“The hope is that in the off chance 504 does go away … we say in our Student Bill of Rights that we have to accommodate students to the best of our ability. One way we do that is by funding OSAT,” Wasinger said.
Currently, OSAT receives funding from both the Student Government Association and the federal government. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, more than 125 anti-DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility) bills have been introduced at the collegiate level since 2023, many of which have impacted policy or DEIA funding.
The task force receives some funding from the student advocate fund but, according to Wasinger, is mostly financially independent, which means it should be able to continue to offer advocacy despite state or federal legislation. However, the task force is not guaranteed to be renewed for another year, as the decision lies with the next SGA administration.
“The future (is a) little unknown as it is with the task force,” Wasinger said. “I’m hoping that whoever picks up the next administration is happy to include accessibility as one of their tenants. I think it’s really important.”
But Wasinger, who will graduate this spring, isn’t worried about the task force’s future. She said people with disabilities, like Heumann, will continue to do what they’ve always done.
“Even if this task force isn’t alive, the people who are part of it are still doing their individual part for disability and advocacy because they have to,” Wasinger said.
Anyone can bring their concerns to the task force or become involved in the group. Wasinger said concerns, which can be shared anonymously, can also be emailed to her at [email protected].
