Fraternity Disability Awareness Dinner
By: Rebecca, MSW
Last night I had the opportunity to attend a disability awareness dinner hosted by the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity on campus. This fraternity’s philanthropy is related to disabilities, specifically building wheelchair ramps, and therefore they seek to do some awareness activities on campus. An email was sent via the Services for Students with Disabilities email list inviting us to come hangout for a little while so we could share our experiences with them. I was pretty surprised because there were only a few students from the email list that actually attended. Most of the chapter was there (probably about 80 guys) and there was dinner and two guest speakers. Themes included the idea that many disabilities are invisible and certain words can be used jokingly, but have negative connotations related to disability. After the guest speakers people were free to socialize. Overall it was a good event, and wonderful to see so many young men on campus interested in this kind of activity.