Advocates for disabled open minds of frosh

Barbara Jeanne Eigenbrood is not handicapped. Nor is she crippled, confined or special. She does not suffer from a disability either. Barbara says she suffers from "ignorance." Like over 12 million working-age Americans, Eigenbrood, a secretary in the Wharton Accounting Department, "walks" with a wheelchair because she does not believe she is different from others. And the same goes for Suzanne Bacal, a Resources for Living Independently activist. Both women spoke to a group of 25 participants in Wharton 101's Disability Awareness Day project last week. The event, sponsored by a group of 30 students in one section -- or "cohort" -- of the mandatory Wharton freshman course, made bandannas, earplugs and wheelchairs available to members of the University community who wanted to simulate disabilities. Wharton freshman Kevin Allen, one of the event's organizers, said the day was successful, adding he hopes that Disability Awareness Day becomes an annual event. Eigenbrood said the day is a necessary event since society does not realize that "people with disabilities have the same attributes as others." She said that waiters at restaurants have first glanced at her then asked her friend, "What does she want?" Others have returned Eigenbrood's credit card to her friend instead of her. "People look at us and assume we can't think, we can't see or we can't speak," Eigenbrood said. Wharton freshman Hal Malone, who spent the afternoon in a wheelchair, said it was "most interesting to me to see other people's reactions." "Two or three people offered to help me, and I was curious as to their motivation," Malone said, noting that he believed pity might have played a significant role. Wharton freshman Tamara York, who also rolled from class to class in a wheelchair for several hours, said throughout the day people would glance and then look away so as not to appear to be staring. "You could almost see them think, 'Thank God it's not me,' " York said, adding that she had great difficulty inching her wheelchair forward while sliding her tray along beside her while waiting in line at Stouffer Dining Commons. When cohort instructor and second-year Wharton graduate student Kevin Moure asked the participants whether they had trouble going to the bathroom, an embarrassing hush fell over the room. "You only had to be disabled for a day," Bacal told the particants, stressing that those with disabilities must learn to cope with the inconveniences every day of their lives. Moure said he was "pretty surprised" to find how easily accessible certain buildings on campus were to the disabled. "I had no problem finding a desk or a seat either in Steinberg-Dietrich or Vance halls," Moure said. But Bacal insisted that people with disabilities "hate being stuck in the back of the room" in sections reserved for disabled people. "Don't segregate us, integrate us," Eigenbrood added. "And I want to go in the same doors everyone else does," she said, speaking of the special "accessible" doors often found in buildings. Wharton freshman Alyssa Hall, who attended her Economics class wearing earplugs, said, "I used to think it'd be a lot easier not hearing" than having any other disability, "but it was just as hard." Hall, who headed the cohort's planning committee, said the earplugs blocked out most of the sound and she was forced to learn solely by what he wrote on the board. "It was impossible," Hall said. "I know I probably missed half the notes." Bacal said that people often mistake her wheelchair for a sure sign that she is deaf. "People yell at me," she said. Wharton senior Brian Carroll, the cohort's other instructor, said it took one and one-half months to prepare the project and that the students did all of the creative planning themselves. Carroll said Eigenbrood and Bacal contributed much more to the class than just their speeches. Students might learn all about the hardships of being a person with a disability, he said, "but unless you actually see the people, you don't know what it's really like." Wharton freshman Melanie Parr said she originally planned on spending the day deaf, but the earplugs kept falling out of her ears, so she decided to be blind for six hours instead. "At first the people in my suite thought I was joking around," Parr said. "They started waving their hands in my face but then they realized I was being serious about it. I had to have a lot of help. I almost put blue cheese [salad] dressing on my burger. It never occurred to me how much we take our eyes for granted." Wharton freshman Michele Wisch, who wore a blindfold, said the time she spent walking from Steinberg-Dietrich Hall was "the longest 15 minutes of my life." "I had two of my friends beside me to guide me, and I never would have been able to do it by myself," Wisch said. "My umbrella was poking people, and [my friends] had to tell me if there was a puddle and if there was a curb." Moure said he got the idea for Disability Awareness Day from a similar day-long event held during his undergraduate years at the University of Virginia. Moure, who spent a day in a wheelchair, said he felt the project had been "successful" because "[they didn't] only affect those who volunteered but also the people they had contact with during the day. Just making them wonder is better than nothing." "We have to legislate the architecture barriers [for disabled people]," Bacal said. "But we can't legislate the attitude barriers." The project aimed to increase awareness of both physical and attitude barriers to the disabled, according to Alice Nagle, Coordinator of Programs for People with Disabilities.