David Anderson: The barriers I faced in my campaign to become Disabled Students Officer at my university

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I’m David Anderson, and I’ve a story.

It’s about my election campaign for Queen’s University Belfast’s Disabled Students Officer in February.

I decided to run for this office due to issues and experiences I’ve had at the university. I wanted to improve and increase the levels of their support provision and end the slow responses and poor organisation to meet requests for suitable support.

All of us know they can take forever even though the interpreters – or terps – are waiting for their contact!

Anyway, these are the issues that gave me the drive to run for the job to improve all disabled student experiences at this university. I confirmed my candidacy on 15th February.

Over that weekend, I prepared for my campaign and located an available interpreter – to assist me communication-wise and to enable me to speak directly with the voters, answer any of their questions, and simply ask for their votes.

I was very confident and eager to get started, and believed that it would be a great campaign.

I have never been so wrong.

Immediately after locating an available terp on Sunday 18th February, I emailed the Student Union’s Student Voice Team (How ironic their name is) to advise them of the available terp and to employ her – (Just for clarification – the Student Voice Team are responsible for ensuring the election runs smoothly). I reckoned they’d reply by end of the day Tuesday with everything booked and sorted.

David’s election speech:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K3xzO3IKkkk

Tuesday came, and they hadn’t came into contact with me, nor the terp.

I emailed the QUB’s support office, even though their main responsibility was organising support for classes, for help first thing in the morning on Wednesday 21st, for urgent contact with the Student Union.

They did not get back to me till Friday 23rd, and when they did, their response was just a recommendation that I should contact the director of the Student Union, and so I did, but I had no reply from the director (even to date of this publication).

So on Friday 23rd, I took to Twitter to complain about the unfairness and a lack of accessibility in the election. The university’s SU twitter came into contact with me shortly after, this was the very first contact from literally anyone from the SU itself after sending my email on Sunday.

Their response was: ‘Hi David, I have forwarded your message on to our Student Voice Team and they will get back to you about this asap today. Thanks’

https://twitter.com/qubsu/status/967074086391304193?s=12

‘Finally.’ I thought to myself. I wanted to start my campaign at the beginning of this week but my campaign had been halted before it has even started due to lack of accessibility and no support provision, due to the slow communication and completion of procedures between the Students’ Voice Team and the Disability Support Office – despite the terp’s availability.

For a whole week – Sunday 18th February to Friday 23rd February – no one was available to talk and there was a lack of suitable responses and organisation to arrange an available terp to assist me with my campaign.

By this time, out of desperation I offered to pay the terp with money from my own pockets just to give myself a chance in the election due to University’s incompetence. The terp didn’t reply to this message though, I think she was in shock!

Friday evening came, and a familiar feeling started to return. Took a look at the clock, it was three hours after SU’s tweet. The Student Voice Team still hadn’t got in touch yet.

Six days, zero contact, apart from a tweet from the Student Union.

I had no idea if they were open during the weekend – their website didn’t say, although I did decide to drop by their office on the Sunday morning since I was in Belfast, but their room was locked up.

The ‘Question Time’ for the election was on Monday 26th – which is a crucial part of an electoral run as many voters will be in the same room to listen and speak with the candidates – and the voting started on Tuesday, and ended on Wednesday 28th but I was unable to start my campaign in person, nor able to do it effectively.

On Sunday evening, the waiting interpreter notified me she had became unavailable for the following week.

At this point I was very frustrated and out of options. I felt like the university was intentionally ignoring me, refusing to assist me, to silence me. To make me lose.

Why, I wasn’t too sure, but I could envision a few reasons. After all, I’ve fought against the university for my rights to access and use qualified interpreters instead of “trainees” for my education. However whatever the reasons are, universities or anywhere else cannot get away with this incompetence. I refuse to be neglected, ignored or to be discriminated against.

So first thing on Monday morning, with an interpreter who was originally booked with me for a morning lesson but due to the UCU Industrial Strike, the class was cancelled so she was available to come with me to the office to confront the Student Voice Team to see what they’ve got to say in person.

Three “solid” things I got out of them were:

1) They are very busy during the election period.

2) They had “a backlog of emails from 75 candidates about the election and communications.”

3) They also said they had to go through some procedures with the disability office to get information on available support for people with my disability, as well as to check for “my support requirements” including interpreters, and to get them to pay for the interpreter services.

I pointed out that my emails weren’t about the election or communication, but to ensure accessibility for me and for all voters and candidates.

Ensuring accessibility should have been their first priority. I also pointed out that I’ve already told them what my requirement was and that was an BSL Interpreter, and I had one ready and waiting for their contact.

As of that Monday morning, they and the Disability Support Office started looking for an available interpreter to cover that same day on Monday, as well as Tuesday and Wednesday. I guffawed at them and said good luck trying to find one at short notice.

So, the university did not process my interpreter request till Monday 26th, eight days after my email, and less than a day before the voting opened. Since the process was done at very last minute, they was only able to provide a trainee who was registered as a communication support worker at my university.

“Better than nothing”, some people said – urgh. This was not giving me full accessibility, but an unqualified accommodation. Unsurprisingly, my wife said the trainee translated myself and the host very poorly during the results night, and my wife filled me and the others in on missing bits.

This story, though, does have a happy ending. Despite my election campaign being focused heavily on Twitter, and not meeting any voters in person, somehow I won by a landslide. I’m still in disbelief, but I’m also angry. With this job, I will be pushing for improved accessibility for everyone at the university and beyond.

David Anderson is 26, Deaf and a BSL/SSE user. He says: “I’m from Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland. I’m studying BA Honours in History at Queen’s University, Belfast. I’m fairly new to the scene as an activist for full accessibility for all deaf and disabled people, but before I started out I understood about how important it is for us to fight for our rights to access opportunities, information and even entertainments. It’s also one of the many reasons why I ran for Disabled Students’ Officer, as I come with ideas and plans to bring positive changes to the university and beyond. I also felt that my experience is very important to share because it shows in our fight for equality and accessibility, we may encounter defeats but in the end against all odds, we will prevail.”