Great Expectations, Part II

I was going to call my blog great expectations today, as an homage to my Victorianist past that seems to have been very much at the forefront this week and because of the topic of the blog post. So imagine my surprise when I realized I already had a blog post from exactly one year ago entitled the same thing. Apparently February is when I get fed up of people and their ideas around expectations. 

The focus of this blog may be a bit different than last years however. I want to talk about how many times in one week people from different parts of my life, but always people connected to education, say to me "you expect too much" whenever I talk about something related to accessibility and equity. I am told "you expect too much" a minimum of 10 times a week, every week. And I guess you can imagine how it feels when you are told that the thing that you feel is really important to creating more inclusive educational spaces is expecting too much. It makes you reflect on where the bar is, and how low that bar is and how low that bar is consistently held that some things are just seen as expecting too much. That somehow expecting disability awareness in academic spaces is expecting too much. That expecting documents and communications to be accessible to folk is expecting too much. That expecting inclusive events that don't gatekeep knowledge or open participants up to bodymind harm is expecting too much.

I have a feeling I am not the only person this happens to regularly. I feel as though most folk who work in accessibility work and care about the accessibility of events, documents, and pedagogy, get told regularly that we are expecting too much. And of course this comes from the fact that the folk who are creating the documents, organizing the events, thinking about the communications, don't have to even think or worry about accessibility because at the moment, in this specific temporal space, they do not need accessibility support. Sadly most of them also think that this will forever be their positionality, that their bodymind will never change, so they will continue to not have to care about any of those accessibility pieces. Those are their expectations. They expect no disability of any kind ever. 

When that is your expectation then there is no sense of urgency for things to change. So sometimes what I get told is modified with a temporal additive like "you expect too much, right now." This is how they try to embed hope in what they are telling you.

• Them: Look you are expecting accessibility to happen right now, and I am telling you it will happen, but just not right now, maybe in the future. 
• Me: Okay when in the future? 
• Them: I don't know, but not right now. 

So what happens when folks are excluded due to lack of accessibility right now? Where is their hope? What should their expectations be? Should they expect to not be able to study or work in college and university spaces? Is that expecting too much?

I would love for people to take some time in the next week or so (or maybe the week after if you are on reading week, or study break next week) to think about how many times you say or are told "you expect too much" when it comes to something equity related. Reflect on when that happens, and who is saying it, that person's position of power, and what your position of power is in relation to them. Let's talk about what you find out with this reflection exercise. I say this because this has real implications on how teaching and learning happens or doesn't happen, and who is in our college and university spaces as learners, and who is in our college and university spaces as folk who have power to make change and just don't. Because somewhere sometime in the past someone told them "you expect too much" and it was just easier for them to stop expecting instead of continuing to fight for equity. And that is what you call a systemic issue, and honestly one would expect nothing less from academe. But I guess I am wondering, when can we expect more?