(tho, lol, so many white people in those comments talking about how they’re going to Do Fraud to take leave and like … good luck doing naked and easily detectable fraud towards the government for at most a few months of leave with partial pay. that’ll end perfectly well for you I’m sure.)

this is not helped by the fact that this week the state is Officially Announcing the paid leave program that’s launching Jan 1 and so all of the Worst Goddamned People are in all the Facebook comments being racist about who’s gonna commit fraud towards the program.

(it’s also possible I did not actually tell you that and am misremembering.)

yeah the big orgs to my knowledge haven’t said much. individual and smaller orgs/groups are being decently vocal, tho more in response to ICE threats to the Somali community than the weaponization of fraud ….

know I told you this a while back but the response I have seen from individuals and smaller disability groups (not big orgs like the Arc or Autism Society) is “this is a racist xenophobic attack and the fraud issue is a red herring.” but again that’s not the bigger orgs making statements tho.

Sure, splitting a bill can be a sign of cheapness, but the sense I have from *talking to women* and being aware in general of how financial abuse in relationships works is that “each person pays their share” is generally much less of a red flag than “the guy pays for everything.”

R O U N D

• “No, we cannot provide safety escorts to students with mobility aids because we don’t have vehicles that will fit them & we won’t just send someone to walk with the student because we assume the student requires a medical escort, which we cannot provide.”

Etcetera. It’s so exhausting.

• “No, we cannot allow you, student experiencing a major disability-related medical crisis, to have an extension on your paper until you are out of the hospital and we also won’t do anything about the professor DEMANDING YOUR MEDICAL RECORDS because they don’t believe you’re really ill.”

Like it’s (usually) never said aloud but everyone knows that you take what you’re granted and don’t push back unless you want to blow up your life. If you have a very clear-cut case and don’t mind the blowback, maybe you have a shot at actual accommodations, but that’s the minority of cases.

(Yeah I know accommodations are an interactive process and you can’t always get what you want. This is not that, it’s disability services offices giving everyone the same accommodations regardless of need because it’s easier/cheaper and most people won’t push back to any real degree.)

So, say, you have a Blind student who needs Braille transcription and a reader/scribe for tests but that’s *expensive*. Much cheaper and easier to give them 2x time and large print for tests – they can muddle through (expending 5x effort of a sighted student) & it’ll do *enough* to pass scrutiny.

What I am saying is that disability services offices (who are doing their best on shoestring budgets) are incentivized to offer all students who qualify for accommodations the easiest, cheapest to implement accommodations, even if a given student actually needs much different accommodations.

I half-assed a bunch of response papers in my LEND class through just picking a few points in the reading I disagreed with and argued against them, citing a mix of academic articles and lay material (including multiple AAF pieces!).

also, it was a response paper??? I’m not justifying her response or saying it’s a good paper but my experience with response papers has been you can write basically anything and as long as you make *some connections* to the reading and cite your sources, you’ll get a decent grade.