Author: stevekuusisto

(Education Week)
March 30, 2012

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND– [Excerpt from Inclusion Daily Express] The early results from a new survey find that 63 percent of children with autism spectrum disorders have been bullied at some point in their lives, three times as much as their brothers and sisters who don’t have the disorders.

The Interactive Autism Network’s survey also found that children with autism — many of whom have deficits in social development — are often intentionally “triggered” into meltdowns or aggressive outbursts by ill-intentioned peers.

IAN’s community scientific liaison, Dr. Connie Anderson, who worked on the survey of about 1,200 children, said the organization delved into the issue because it was a topic of conversation but hadn’t been studied in depth.

In a discussion about the results, Dr. Anderson said the survey revealed other details — and more questions to explore — about how bullying affects students with ASD.

Other studies have found that in general, children with disabilities are bullied more than other students.

Entire article:
Children With Autism More Likely to be Bullied
http://tinyurl.com/ide0330121a
Related:
New Data Show Children with Autism Bullied Three Times More Frequently than Their Unaffected Siblings (Kennedy Krieger Institute)
http://tinyurl.com/ide0330121b
HHS and Education launch new Stop Bullying website (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2012pres/03/20120330b.html

From The New York Times:

NEWS ANALYSIS: The Autism Wars

A report finds a surge in reported cases, and that produces a surge in skepticism.

http://nyti.ms/HoLVWC

Stephen Kuusisto
Director
The Renee Crown University Honors Program
University Professor
Syracuse University

Mom Uses Peanut M&Ms To Kill Special Needs
Daughter

A New York mom is accused of killing her daughter
by feeding the little girl peanut M&Ms — which she was severely allergic to, cops said. Veronica Cirella, 31, of Plainview, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to second-degree murder in the death of her 8-year-old daughter Julie, who was found dead in her home
on July 23 last year, CBS reported. The little girl, who had cerebral palsy, was found just hours before she was to be a flower girl in a cousin's wedding. Cops found Cirella lying on the floor near her daughter's body. She had allegedly tried to kill…

Stephen Kuusisto 

Director

The Renee Crown University Honors Program 

University Professor

Syracuse University

No one is really an independent man or woman. The notion that you should live without help is a modern idea.  Ancient people just wouldn’t understand it. The rider of a horse in the age of Sophocles saw his steed as both a form of transport and a means of keeping time–a horse was a clock. A horse’s day of labor was a calendar.  

A horse was a figure of dreams. Very likely a horse could reveal your fortune. “Show me your horse and I will tell you what you are,” says an old English proverb. Throughout history horses and dogs have kept us alive. 

Do you see that woman on Fifth Avenue in New York? She’s thrity something, blonde, has a Yankees warm up jacket and a backpack. She might be a professor at NYU. She’s walking with a guide dog, a black Labrador. She’s moving very fast. She passes the darkening mirrors of storefront windows, walks so fast she appears to move ahead of the weather. Together she and her dog are racing through the black gardens of blindness. They are worthy of an ancient oath that was taken between men and animals. And there they are, outside of the coffee bean store, together in the exercise of their amazing life together. Did you see them? 

The skin of the onion is the measure of his glory. But his skin is imperfect, a humiliation, a hundred layers of anguish. The onion is a kind of library, an archive of failures. Explore him. Peel away the layers. See Aristotle waving five roses at sunrise. See Cain who goes on killing Abel. See Algebra. See the coins of Silesius. Damned if you can’t see everything in the broken and thin leftovers. This is a sufficient way of knowing, immortal. Say what you want. 

Disability Awareness Month at The Ohio State University

Thirty five years ago the Section 504 demonstration proved to be a watershed event for the civil rights of people with disabilities. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 adaptive the concept of reasonable accommodation that was originally applied to religious practices to people with disabilities. 504 established and still provides for accommodations in all programs receiving federal funds (education, transportation, arts programs, health care, …). This landmark legislation was passed in 1973 but was not being enforced because the implementing regulations were held up in Heath, Education and Welfare. The disability community became increasingly frustrated until on April 5,1977, roughly 600 people assembled at the regional office of United Stated Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

The protest in San Francisco became the longest occupation of a Federal Building in U.S. history. After 28 days, Section 504 was signed which was a great victory. If you have access to the internet you can watch a wonderful video of this protest by navigating your web browser to:

CBS Evening News 504http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbfNJpFni-E

The Power of 504 part 1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMC5UuiIQkI&feature=watch_response

The Power of 504 part 2http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vOM0-IOrKg&feature=watch_response

REGISTRATION OPEN 2012 MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES CONFERENCE

Call for Dick Maxwell Award Nominations!

L. Scott Lissner, Ohio State University ADA Coordinator, Office Of Diversity And Inclusion
Associate, John Glenn School of Public Affairs
Lecturer, Knowlton School of Architecture, Moritz College of Law & Disability Studies

President Elect, Association on Higher Education And Disability

Chair, ADA-OHIO
Appointed, Ohio Governor’s Council For People With Disabilities, State HAVA Committee &

Columbus Advisory Council on Disability Issues

(614) 292-6207(v); (614) 688-8605(tty) (614) 688-3665(fax);Http://ada.osu.edu

291 W. Lane Ave, Columbus, OH 43210-1266

REGISTRATION OPEN 2012 MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES CONFERENCE

By Andrea Scarpino

“You can call on beauty still and it will leap

from all directions.” ~Adrienne Rich

The University of Cincinnati’s Zimmer Auditorium is a dreadful, dreary place: rows and rows of uncomfortable seats, a dark stage, cement walls, cold air blowing from everywhere. I took my general education requirements in that auditorium, biology charts projected on an enormous screen while most of the 500 students slept.

Then Adrienne Rich came to campus. She already seemed ancient—and this was 15 years ago—a tiny, gray-haired woman who walked slowly as she made her way across Zimmer’s stage to the podium. A long-time feminist and lesbian scholar, a long-time poet—and I was already a devotee. When I found Rich’s work, poetry opened up for me, moved in entirely new directions. Here was a woman unafraid on the page, unafraid to write about sexism or sex, unafraid to use form when it suited a poem’s needs and to abandon it when it didn’t, unafraid to tackle huge global issues or a day’s simple moments. Unafraid.

So she came to UC, and even though I was an undergraduate, one of my professors invited me to a small discussion with the graduate students, only 15 of us in a library room sitting across from Adrienne Rich. She looked much frailer than I expected, spoke quietly but with force. And I still have the notes I took as she spoke: poets must examine their location in the world; be clear that every private life is connected to a wider public life; go out into the world in pursuit of poetry instead of looking for it behind closed doors.

And that evening, Zimmer Auditorium: a poetry reading. Almost every single seat was filled—all 500 of them. Rich was introduced, and she began her slow walk across the stage. And the applause began, thundering, echoing off the concrete. Whistles and cheers filled that horrid, dreary place. And we stood. Before she had even spoken, Adrienne Rich received a standing ovation. A poet. A feminist.

Last week, when news of Rich’s death began appearing in my inbox, I spent hours reading various tributes and obituaries, scouring the news. Everything I found seemed distant, too insistent on reminding us that Adrienne Rich mattered. But those of us who adore her work already know how much she mattered.

So I thought instead of that moment in Zimmer Auditorium. How remarkable it is that in a time when American poets daily lament the death of poetry, of readership, here was a poet who filled a 500 seat auditorium, who received a standing ovation before she even read one poem (and another when she was done reading). And I thought of that small session in the library, how she said, “Poetry is a life. You must feel compelled to do it at all costs.” How she lived that truth. How she inspired me to do the same. How she inspired so many of us. How she called on beauty—even in the midst of the most terrible times—and watched it leap from all directions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/04/03/human-trafficking-victims_n_1401673.html?ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=040412&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

Stephen Kuusisto
Director
The Renee Crown University
Honors Program
University Professor
Syracuse University

From The New York Times:

EDITORIAL: Calling Radicalism by Its Name

In a blistering speech, President Obama denounced the Republican Party for cruelty and extremism and signaled a tough-minded campaign ahead.

http://nyti.ms/HQOfDs

Stephen Kuusisto
Director
The Renee Crown University Honors Program
University Professor
Syracuse University

When President Obama called the GOP budget plan “Social Darwinism” today he told the truth. People with disabilities, the elderly, the very poor rely on Social Security Disability benefits, Medicare, and Medicaid, and by “rely” I mean to say (and let’s be clear) these programs keep people alive. I can testify in this matter: in the 1990’s I spent two full years entirely unemployed. I owe my life, quite literally, to Social Security Disability payments, Section 8 housing vouchers, and Food Stamps. I was able, with luck and persistence, to find a job and return to the tax rolls. I owe a good deal to the very social programs that Paul Ryan is aiming to eliminate. I’ve also more than paid back what those programs spent on me over the past two decades of successful employment. But I digress.

I’ve written before on this blog about the GOP and Social Darwinism. The idea that the sick and weak are not the obligation of the strong is one part of the historical misapplication of Darwin’s theory of evolution, but the meaner aspect of this is the idea that the vulnerable in a society destroy that society. Forget that our military industrial expenditures are the greatest government welfare scheme in all of human history, forget that the perpetual warfare state has destroyed our nation’s infrastructure, our schools, our freedoms–it’s the poor who are doing the most damage to this country, didn’t you know?

The dishonesty of the Ryan plan comes from its repositioning of the social safety net away from Washington and into the hands of the states–it sounds reasonable until you discern that the states (already broke) can take the diminished block grant money from DC and use it any way they like. This is not sophistry on my part. The Ryan plan would really unplug Grandma. Really. And in light of this the president told the truth this afternoon. The GOP can sneer all they want. The truth will out.