Conn opens Disability Cultural Center
At the grand opening of Connecticut College’s Disability Cultural Center on April 1, advocate and educator John Sharon ’86 recalled organizing Conn’s first Disability Awareness Week more than 40 years ago.
“We put up posters, we showed movies, we held discussions, and we had about 10 students who volunteered to spend the entire week navigating the campus entirely by wheelchair,” he told the large audience of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and former faculty and staff gathered for the event in the new, bright space in Smith House.
Sharon, who was born with Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita, a rare condition that limits muscle and bone growth in the extremities, explained he didn’t come to Conn intending to become an activist—“At the time, I didn’t think much about disability or accessibility or who I was other than just an eager 18-year-old who wanted to fit in,” he said. But that all changed after a classmate studying accessibility in education asked Sharon what he thought about accessibility at Conn.
“I hadn’t really thought about it, but I started to get curious and the more I looked, the more I saw, and the more I saw, the more I realized that the campus was almost completely inaccessible for anyone who might use a wheelchair for transport, who might be deaf, who might be blind,” he said. “As I reflect back on the birth of my activism, I am convinced that the College gave me the freedom to find my voice in no small measure because the school knew deep down that we were right—the College was not a place of belonging for all kinds of bodies.”
To now be celebrating the opening of the Disability Cultural Center “is nothing short of staggering,” Sharon said.
“This is a place that will give voice and agency and power and community and intersectionality and belonging to those who for too long have had to live on the outskirts of society. … The center offers an invitation to those on the margins to come to the very center of the page and live their lives and their stories to the fullest.”
