NIU Disability Resource Center

Kelsey Williams

The NIU Disability Resource Center consistently denies students reasonable accommodations, actively works to silence disabled students, and covers its tracks legally so we have no legal recourse. The director, Deb Miller, was invited to be a moderator on an Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ADEI) Diversity Dialogue featuring disabled and deaf students as panelists. She got the students kicked off so she and a retired professor could be the speakers instead, saying that NIU students \were not ready\ to hear from disabled people directly. Some students are given technology from the 80s and 90s to take their exams. Multiple students with varied disabilities have been denied human scribes and readers for written exams, and told it is not a reasonable accommodation under the ADA. Whether on my own or with other students, I personally spoke to the ombudsperson, Presidential Commission on Persons with Disabilities (PCPD), rehabilitation counseling professors, and several employees at the ADEI to ask for help, and they all defended the DRC and dismissed my and other students' concerns.

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