Last week United Students and the Student Association, along with several other organizations, held activities on campus to promote National Disability Awareness Month.
One of the awareness activities, called Disability for a Day, allowed MSU students to check out wheelchairs and then go to their classes.
The event is designed to help MSU students without disabilities understand the hardships connected to disability, United Students President Blake Watson said.
“Our goal is to promote disability awareness,” Watson said. “Participation of the rest of the student body has been really good. It’s interesting to see a change in attitude after a student takes a wheelchair for a while,” he said.
“Not that their attitude is bad before, the change is in understanding,” he added.
Those who came out to participate left with a higher level of understanding.
“A lot of people really have a good experience with it, and it shows them how hard it is to get around campus. I did it for around four hours and I was dead tired afterward,” SA students with disabilities affairs cabinet head Phillip Chadwick said.
Everybody has hardships, and the important part is how they deal with them, disability service coordinator Donnie Prisock said. “We don’t appreciate what we have until we don’t have it.”
“We all have obstacles, but some people get more obstacles than others. Life gives you cards, and you have to do the best with what you’ve got or what you don’t have.” Prisock said.
Members of United Students attended the event to help promote awareness and watch as other MSU students came out to participate.
“People come and get a wheelchair and go through a regular class day. Most people are really impressed with what we go through in a day,” junior psychology major Adam Brown said. “I was impressed with the turnout for the wheelchair events.”
Other organizations involved were the T.K. Martin Center, the Blindness and Low Vision Center, the Holmes Cultural Diversity Center and LIFE-Living Independence For Everyone-of Mississippi. While the activities have been going on regularly for over 25 years, the accessibility of the Mississippi State campus has improved drastically, Prisock said.
“I came to MSU as a student in 1972. There were two wheelchair ramps on campus, one at Hand Lab and one at the Lloyd Ricks building that was a 45 degree incline. There were no curb-cuts 25 years ago, either,” Prisock said.