President Ono’s new Working Committee on Disability Culture, Art, and Equity
President Ono’s new Working Committee on Disability Culture, Art, and Equity is co-chaired by Dr. Leslie G. Roman (Professor Educational Studies) and Dr. Neil Guppy (Professor, Sociology) and gathers an interdisciplinary group of disability scholars, graduate students, and staff, including the Dept. of Theatre and Film’s Dr. Kirsty Johnston, a disability performance scholar. The working group understands disability culture, art and equity as interwoven threads with the potential to disrupt conventional stereotypes about disabilities and non-normative embodiments. It turns away from the deficit understandings of people with disabilities or stereotypes of pity, tragedy and criminality towards an arts-based and creative understanding of disabilities as valued differences on our campus and in our lives. How can UBC support the full access of students, faculty and staff to the built environment but also to the arts, culture, and creative-meaning of images that speak from the lived experiences of students, faculty and staff and other members of the diverse disability community? Disability rights are human rights and the art, culture and aesthetics of living with a disability also must be figured as part of the equity story. Rights’-based accessibility issues are also artful and aesthetic questions.
The committee members featured in the photo are from left to right are:
Monica Kay, Director of Conflict Management, Equity office;
Professor William McKellin, Anthropology
Rumana Monzur, J.D. Candidate 2017, Allard School of Law. (Student Rep, UBC-Vancouver).
Dr. Ruth Warick, Ph.D. and Senior Advisor, Access and Diversity
Professor. and Dean Blye Frank, Faculty of Education, as supporter of the Disability Culture, Arts, and Equity UBC (not a member of the committee)
President and Professor Santa Ono
Dr. Leslie G. Roman, Professor, Educational Studies
Jessica La Rochelle, Lhkwemiya Assistant Director, NITEP | Manager, Indigenous Education
Dr. Kirsty Johnston, Associate Professor, Theatre and Film
Professor Jonas Sebastian-Beaudry, Asst. Professor, Allard School of Law
The mandate of the President’s Office working committee on Disability Culture, Art and Equity is to identify the barriers faced by people with disabilities on UBC’s campuses and seek ways of removing such barriers; to develop strategies for raising awareness of disability among all members of the UBC community and beyond; to support learning and research in this area; to encourage development of cultural and artistic expression by people with disabilities, and solicit proposals for cultural projects; and to explore ways of raising funds in support of such projects.
Other vital members of the President’s Working Committee of Disability Culture, Arts, and Equity not pictured here are:
Janet Mee, Director of Access and Diversity,
Tom Patch, former AVP Equity, Chairs the City’s Advisory Committee on Disability
Jon Breen, Ph.D. graduate student in Social Work
Professor Matthew Rader, Asst. Prof. UBC-O, Creative Writing and Critical Studies
Professor Rachelle Hole, Associate Professor, UBC-O, Social Work
Professor Tim Stainton, Founder and Director, Centre for Inclusion and Citizenship, Social Work
Jewelles Smith, graduate student at UBC-O and
Professor Tal Jarus, Occupational Therapy.
