Paint By Numbers

I didn't post a blog last week because I got out of the city for a bit because I thought distance would help. It didn't sadly, because I came back to witness more trauma-creating policies and spaces. On reflection this week I realized that HigherEd is excellent at weaponizing numbers without context. All they care about is quantitative data, data without context, data without stories. So for this week's blog I decided to give a list of the kinds of numbers they should be looking at if they really love numbers so much:

• How many disabled people are in the meetings where administrative decisions are made?
• What is the Accessibility Services Support to student ratio at your institution? Or in other words how many individual staff in AccessServices are dedicated to support one student with accessibility needs on your campus?
• How many articles and books on different pedagogical modalities have administrators who make decisions read in the last 4 months?
• How many hours of mental health first aid training have administrators done in the last year? (Real mental health first aid, not "wellness webinars")
• How many students have dropped out because of different kinds of access issues whether they identify as disabled or not?
• How many faculty and staff have quit because they refuse to be complicit in harming students and peers?
• How many have started writing I resign letters because of what they have to work with and through everyday?
• How many people have you hurt this week?

You see the answer to most of these is zero or should be zero. But that last one... that last one... That last one I know is at least one because I am one of them. You hurt me this week HigherEd, and you continue to hurt me with your communications and policies that show that you have no awareness of International students' needs; of disabled students' supports who have accommodations; of disabled students' needs who don't have accommodations because the system to receive this piece of paper is expensive, lengthy, and harmful; of what inclusive pedagogy looks like as praxis; of the kinds of education, mindful care, and awareness it takes to train others.  

We are not just numbers. We are people. Students are people. Staff are people. Instructors are people. You are hurting people with your paint by numbers policies and framing. 

I don't know what the answer is to be honest. It's not crying because I have done a whole bunch of that. It's not anger I guess because they don't care about that either even when people die. It's not providing articles and research because they don't read them (no time or pretend they have when they haven't). 

So if you have any great ideas about how we can all collectively stop being hurt from a system that we have put so much into because we care about education and we care about students and we care about ethics, I am open to hearing it. Because I don't want to spend my days doing crisis response because of a meeting. I don't want to have to support instructors to do some sort of unethical jenga to make something that would very easily and effectively work one way have to work in another way because "the powers that be said so."  If you are in HigherEd and you can rest easy at night I have news for you, you are probably the originator of why those questions above even need to be asked and I guess I am just asking, can you please have some fucking mercy and humanity?