Time to move on

My reasons for writing this particular letter are threefold. First, I would like to thank Sue Reinhardt, retired team coordinator of Services for Students with Disabilities, for an excellent column in the Wednesday Nov. 17, 1993 issue of The Northern Star. Your letter seemed to strongly reinforce the feelings expressed by those of us who responded to the articles of Nov. 8 and 9. Coming from someone on the “inside” helped fortify our feelings of support and concern for SSD. Second, I would also like to compliment what I though was a well-written, unbiased editorial that appeared in this same paper. It showed support for both Services for Students with Disabilities, the services they provide for disabled students on the NIU campus, the right of Cary Supalo to both speak out about his beliefs and his right to be independent. I hope that we can begin to put all this aside now and get down to the business of education.

However, my third reason for writing this letter involves Adam’s “political cartoon” that appeared with the editorial mentioned above. Once again, this is my opinion, but I found that cartoon to be quite offensive to both Cary and to SSD and equally unnecessary. The issues raised by everyone concerned were neither political nor funny. This cartoon is just one more example of the type of prejudicial disability bashing that goes on all the time by people who are ignorant, or perhaps just uneducated, about persons with disabilities. You are striking out at a group of people who have enough strikes against them already without ‘you’ making matters even worse by your insensitivity to a very real problem and by demeaning the only organization on the NIU campus available to them for assistance. It appears to me that all of this is really an internal problem between SSD and their students, and probably should never have been made public in the first place. But, it was indeed made public, opinions have been noted, and now it is time to move on.

Carol Eustace

Graduate Student

Special Education