Students with disabilities face bigotry in classroom

Editor,

UNM has a history of ignoring students with disabilities and their needs. Students with disabilities are routinely discriminated against at UNM, and in some cases in the classroom.

In a psychology class at UNM in Dane Smith Hall, I had my chair - a chair placed by Accessibility Services in the classroom for my use, a chair with a large sign on it explaining that it was the property of Accessibility Services, a chair I was sitting on - taken by the TA in the class, and I was forced to leave the classroom.

Perhaps, if that event and the subsequent actions taken by the principals involved were investigated as hate crimes, we would have an improvement on the conditions faced by disabled students at UNM.

I have asked the director of Accessibility Services, Special Services Program, Joan Green, the vice president of Student Affairs, Cheo Torres, and others to provide funding for a stigma-reduction initiative to address the problem of students with

disabilities.

We need public dialog and funding to address this issue.

Frank Martin

UNM student