"Like Alice through the looking glass": II: the struggle for accommodation continues.

This article provides an autoethnographic account of the more recent phase of my ongoing struggles, as a disabled female faculty member at a Canadian university, for my legal rights to reasonable accommodation and freedom from discrimination on the basis of disability. It is a sequel to an article dealing with the early years of my struggles for accommodation, published in this journal [vol. 24, nos. 3/4 (1995/96)]. It focuses on the many social barriers to accommodation, inclusion and equality of rights that I encountered in an academic workplace. These included devaluations of my contributions in the workplace, social and spatial exclusion from events in my academic unit, prolonged systemic salary discrimination. resistance to developing a reasonable accommodation plan and even hostility and punishment for being vocal on accommodation issues and, ultimately, taking legal action against the University. This article not only sheds light on some of the challenges facing disabled women who struggle for accommodation in academic workplaces but also encourages others to share their experiences of struggling for fair and reasonable accommodation.

Introduction

It was in 1993, three years after being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, that I first began to write about my struggles for accommodation as a disabled female professor in a Canadian academic workplace. I did so out of a sense of outrage and disbelief that an institution of higher learning and research, instead of setting a positive example on this crucial human rights issue, seemed to operate in ways that, perversely, made my job immeasurably more difficult to do than I could have ever imagined as an able-bodied female scholar. This is saying something, since even before becoming ill my job had been made difficult enough by marginalizing behaviours on the part of some colleagues. I was not only the only female professor in my department at the time but was also working in newer areas of human geography (radical and feminist) which were not well understood or valued by some colleagues. I was also outspoken rather than being the quiet and deferential woman at least some of my male colleagues preferred.

It was at the urging of a colleague at another University that I decided to share the story of my struggle for accommodation in an academic workplace with others. The early years of my struggles are recounted in the 1996 article entitled "Like Alice Through the Looking Glass: Accommodation in Academia" published in this journal. Although I had referred in passing to certain aspects of those struggles elsewhere it was in the "Alice" article that I found, for the first time, the courage to begin to write openly about the enormous personal and professional toll that these struggles for accommodation had taken.

The decision to write the first "Alice" article was not an easy one. Not only was I making an intensely personal and traumatic set of experiences public but I was also conscious of the very real possibility of "backlash" from administrators and others who might have preferred that women such as myself remained silent. It was a risky decision and one that in some ways made me vulnerable to further discrimination. And it is fair to say that I have been "punished" at times in my workplace for not remaining silent. If anything, however, efforts to intimidate me into silence have only made me even more aware of how important it is that disabled women speak out about their lives in academic and other workplaces. Intolerance toward women with illnesses and impairments compounds and deepens the other disadvantages women face in academic and other settings. The end result is that women already struggling to deal with serious physical and psychological challenges, such as limited mobility and chronic pain, are forced to contend with a multiplicity of daunting barriers to doing their jobs; barriers arising from socio-spatial practices of devaluation, marginalization and exclusion.

Although some at my University may disapprove, it is for these reasons that I have decided to write a sequel to the "Alice" article. I would like to share some of what I've experienced and learned about being a disabled woman in an academic workplace since the mid-1990s and to encourage others to speak out and help in the vital work of making our academic and other work environments more supportive and inclusive of disabled women and diverse people in general.

An Autoethnographic Account

As in the original Alice article, I adopt an autoethnographic approach: reflecting on my personal experiences of struggling for accommodation and of being devalued and constructed as "out of place" in the academy as a result of illness and impairment, and trying to understand those personal experiences in a wider social and cultural context. While definitions of and approaches to autoethnography vary (for discussions see Ellis, 1997; Ellis and Bochner, 2000; Besio and Butz, 2004; Besio, 2005; Crang and Cook, 2007), here I use the term in a manner consistent with how autoethnography is defined in the Sage Dictionary of Qualitative Inquiry (Schwandt, 2007, p. 16) as "... a particular form of writing that seeks to unite ethnographic (looking outward at a world beyond one's own) with autobiographical (gazing inward for a story of oneself) intentions." My account aims, in other words, to draw readers into my personal story of being constructed as negatively "other" in an academic workplace (in the evocative sense) and to try to begin to make at least some sense of why it is that such workplaces remain resistant to full inclusion of persons with illnesses and impairments who need accommodation.

Of Hollow Victories and Ongoing Struggles

By the time the first Alice article was written, I had begun to suspect that my struggles for accommodation of my needs as a disabled professor might go on indefinitely. I had also learned that there is a perverse illogic to the norms and practices of ableness that govern our work environments in which privileges associated with being able-bodied, such as being assumed to be a productive worker who "belongs" in the workplace, are lived as taken-forgranted entitlements of "normality" and discriminatory acts toward those unable to approximate able norms are re-represented as fair, impartial and appropriate treatment. I have likened the experience of that illogic to Alice's experiences through the looking glass: of a topsy-turvy world in which arguments are no longer rational or fair although they are represented as such. Being a disabled woman struggling for accommodation in an academic workplace is rather like being at a "mad" tea party which stubbornly refuses to end. Indeed, a picture of Alice at the Mad Hatter's table hangs in my office to remind me, should I ever forget, of exactly that point.

After an initial accommodation agreement was reached, in 1994, I gradually realized that my "victory" in continuing to be allowed to do my job was a highly qualified one. The seemingly mundane fact that I was still visibly in a workplace in which at least some colleagues regarded me as "not belonging" and "out of place" was in some ways a hollow victory since it set the stage for less obvious, more insidious forms of devaluation, exclusion and discrimination than I had faced before (e.g., tangible physical barriers such as access to the building in which my office was located). It was only once these more obvious, tangible barriers to doing my job had been removed, that what disability scholars refer to as the pervasive social barriers facing disabled people (arising from practices which devalue and discriminate against persons with disabilities) emerged more clearly into view.

I noticed, for example, that an ongoing problem in my home academic unit was annual evaluations of my academic performance that were always "below par"; seemingly irrespective of my productivity on the duties I remained responsible for under the accommodation arrangement (i.e., research and service work and graduate but not undergraduate teaching). When I questioned this I was reminded that I was in a very "productive" academic unit (quite true at least as measured in simple ways such as research grant dollars) and so "of course" would come up short in comparison. I discovered, however, that there was more to my seemingly dismal performance than that; in fact, I was being evaluated as if I were still responsible for the same set of duties as my able-bodied colleagues, in other words, I was not being evaluated on the basis of duties that I remained responsible for under the accommodation agreement but for those as well as those I would have been responsible for had I not been accommodated. I would argue, drawing on the wider literature concerned with how "fictionalized" identities are constructed in relation to disabled workers, that this is one of the important ways in which disabled academic women such as myself can be constructed as "less capable" and less valuable members of an academic workplace (for discussion of the role of fictionalization and negative ascribed identities in marginalizing disabled workers, see Robert and Harlan, 2006). These parallel modes of devaluation experienced by others who embody "difference" in the academy; for example assumptions that women of colour faculty encounter that they are not in academic workplaces because of their abilities and talents but as a result of affirmative action initiatives (Mahanti, 2004).

While it is, in hindsight, so obviously unfair to evaluate an employee for work they are no longer expected to do that it seems bizarre that this would happen--it is like giving a worker one job description and then evaluating them on the basis of another--I was placed in a situation in which I could not possibly "win." However, my inevitable "below par" rating did benefit my immediate co-workers because in the par system of evaluation (an inherently divisive system which compares individual performances and allocates set salary increments accordingly) poor evaluations of my academic performance meant that there were more salary increments that could be distributed amongst the able majority. My Dean once, to his credit that year, adjusted my performance to a "par" rating in response to the concerns I continued to express about how my academic performance was being evaluated. This meant, had recommend--salary increases ever been processed in my case during the 1990s (which they were not), then I might have at least have had a little financial incentive to do what I was already doing because I loved my work. That was, as medication and my illness permitted, doing my best to work at my modified duties full time despite assessments of my "functional abilities" (physical abilities to move, walk and so on) by medical experts which concluded that it was admirable that I was continuing to work at all since, on a purely medical basis, I qualified as fully disabled.

It is difficult to convey how draining my struggles to have inequities such as this addressed became as a result of the University's prolonged failure to act in any systematic way to correct them but also, and in some ways most importantly, because of the hostility and ill will I encountered from some of those in positions of administrative authority as a result of raising such valid accommodation issues. I recall, for example, a meeting that took place after the Dean of Science had, on a one-time-only basis, made the adjustment to my performance evaluation. The meeting was an annual meeting to discuss accommodation matters with myself, the Dean of Science, Director of my home academic unit and the University Equity Officer in attendance (a meeting required as part of the 1994 agreement). It was an extremely tense meeting with a visibly angry Director expressing frustration, resentment and more than a little hostility toward myself and the Dean as a result of the Dean's decision to over-ride the performance evaluation of the School committee that year. Accusing the Dean and me of having struck some sort of "special deal" which, correctly, the Dean said was not the case, the Director sarcastically retorted something to the effect of "Well, why bother to assess her performance at all.... Why not simply always judge it as 'par'?" The tension in the room escalated when I correctly pointed out that there were problems with such an approach; notably that it dismissed the possibility that, in fact, my performance might sometimes be "above par" as well. This, as it turned out, would be a relatively mild example of situations in which I (or my graduate students) were punished for speaking out on accommodation issues (as well as those who took even limited steps to address the issues I raised).

Spatial and Social Exclusion

Another facet of the marginalization that disabled workers experience in our contemporary workplaces is spatial and social exclusion (Robert and Harlan, 2006) taking forms such as isolated office locations and being avoided by co-workers who feel uncomfortable interacting with a disabled person. One form of social and spatial exclusion that I experienced on ongoing basis in my home academic unit was the fact that faculty meetings and other School events including Christmas parties and welcome to term events were located in places I could not physically access, as someone who had to use an electric scooter to get around. Although an automatic door opener had been placed upon the door of the room used for faculty meetings, staff had to remember to turn it on so that I could get into the room on my own (the whole logic of course behind having automatic door openers in the first place). This was never done and so I was reduced to banging on the door until someone opened it and cleared my way in--obviously more disruptive and awkward for me than had the device been turned on. And although I repeatedly raised concerns with the School administrator about the location of School events in places that could only be accessed by stairs (which obviously my scooter could not do), nothing was done. I was forced not to attend many events where my graduate students, in particular, would have appreciated my presence. When I finally (and somewhat uncharacteristically) gave up on raising objections to these locations my graduate students did, only to be told in no uncertain and unsupportive terms, "Vera would get in if she really wanted to." How someone whose mobility was so limited that she used a scooter would do this was beyond me--unless, as I joked with my graduate students, it was by parachute!

Systemic Salary Discrimination

Then there was the vexing issue of prolonged systemic salary discrimination. When I became ill, in 1990, my salary was frozen at the low Associate Professor level I was earning at the time. This was followed, as I explained in the first Alice article, by the accommodation arrangement of 1994 whereby the University would pay one-half of this frozen salary and the University insurer would pay the other one-half as disability benefits. Unfortunately, the plan did not include any provisions for salary increments, even though I was working full-time at my modified duties, continued to have my performance annually reviewed, and my Faculty Dean forwarded recommendations for annual salary increases accordingly. And when I repeatedly inquired as to how this salary discrimination would be remedied the response from our Human Resources benefits administrator at the time was always the same: that it was impossible to increase my salary because, if the University did so, then the insurance company would simply "claw back" a corresponding amount of the benefits portion of my salary. The outcome then was a salary frozen at 1990 levels seemingly in perpetuity. There was obviously more than a little something wrong with this scenario, as I kept insisting to senior University administrators. However, nothing was done.

By 1998, when I was promoted to full professor, I had decided that this long-standing financial discrimination was intolerable, unjust and had to be addressed. If I could perform my duties under the accommodation agreement at a level which warranted promotion to this senior level of the academy, surely I also deserved to earn more than I had almost a decade earlier!

On May 26, 1998, I sent a memo to the Provost and Vice-President of the University, outlining the facts of my case, my mounting concerns regarding the ongoing systemic salary discrimination I had then been experiencing for 8 years, and the future salary discrimination that I would face were the University to adopt a Human Resources' proposal for paying my salary in the future (the outcome of time-consuming and on my part very frustrating internal negotiations). I noted that Human Resources and the University generally had effectively acknowledged salary discrimination in my case by agreeing to a one-time lump sum payment in partial compensation for wages lost from 1990 to 1998 (a payment of a little over $11,000 made in October 1998). I explained the systemic discrimination and violations of disabled faculty's rights that were embedded in the new proposal for my salary emanating from the Human Resources department:

The proposed scheme was a "deal" with the insurer allowing [the Insurance Co.]to claw back 20% of any salary increases received (through reductions in disability benefit payments) and exemption from their responsibility to cover salary increases earned since 1990 in the event of increased or total incapacity to work. The scheme discriminates against disabled faculty in the following ways: a) by making all earned salary increases 20% less than those earned by non-disabled faculty, b) by allowing the insurer to eventually halt payment of all disability benefits even if the disabled faculty member's capacity to work has not increased, c) by providing no insurance coverage for salary increases earned after accommodation of special needs, and d) thus imposing financial penalties on disabled faculty in order to benefit able-bodied faculty through lower disability insurance premiums. (Memo to Provost from Dr. V. Chouinard Re: Salary Situation, May 26, 1998, page 1)

I went on to outline how the handling of my case was in violation of Canadian human rights law: breaching the principle of equal treatment in employment irrespective of differences such as race, gender, disability and age and the Canadian Human Rights Act's explicit statement that discrimination in employment consists in any act that adversely differentiates an employee, on a prohibited ground, in the course of her or his employment. The memo closed with a list of proposed remedies for the salary discrimination experienced to date, including adjustment of my salary to at least the base level received by a full professor at the University, and financial compensation for lost salary and interest which would have accrued from same since 1990.

It was over a year later, on August 23, 1999, that I received an interim response to my stated concerns in a memo from the Provost to the Dean of Science, Head of Human Resources, a Vice-President dealing with financial aspects of the University and myself. In that memo, the Provost acknowledged that looking into my case had been a complex but educational task (he noted in particular learning about the elements and structures of the University's long-term disability benefits plan). He stated that it was important that the University recognize the significant career advancement entailed in my promotion to Full Professor through an appropriate salary increase. He went on to note that my case raised the question of whether or not a partial disability benefits plan should be considered by the University in its negotiations with the McMaster University Faculty Association. He also voiced concern about my lack of insurance coverage in the unfortunate event that I became fully disabled at some point in the future. He outlined the steps he was prepared to take to address the issues in my case. These were to increase my salary to a level recommended by the Dean of Science, support Human Resource's recommended "80/20%" split of this increased salary between the University and insurer, which was the inequitable plan discussed in my 1998 memo to him, and suggest that disability arrangements for faculty be examined. He asked us for any additional input we might have and indicated that he would write a final memo on the matter by September 10, 1999.

My first response to the August 1999 interim memo was outrage that, after several years of ongoing discussion and negotiations around these matters, the University was prepared to entrench salary discrimination as an ongoing feature of my life as a disabled female professor. Surely, through almost a decade of discussions about disability, equity and human rights, we had learned better than that. Moreover, as an institution of higher learning, surely it was everyone's responsibility as part of the University community to stand firm against discriminatory, exclusionary and quite frankly, illegal practices! Although I appreciated the Provost's efforts to become better informed about my case and disability issues generally--after all I knew first hand how complex a case mine had become as too many years of inaction passed--I could not condone continued violation of my, and presumably other disabled workers', rights on campus.

A few days after receiving this memo, I decided to act on advice that I get a lawyer with expertise in human rights. I drove to an imposing office tower in downtown Toronto for an appointment with an eminent Canadian lawyer who had headed the Ontario Human Rights Commission before returning to private practice. I remember the deep sense of outrage and fury that precipitated my decision to take legal action. I had tried at this point for almost a decade to work in a collegial way toward a fair accommodation of my disability. I had even spent two years in the mid-1990s working with a large number of faculty and staff to draft an accommodation policy that McMaster could be proud of and use to guide its handling of cases of disability and other needs arising from diversity in the future. It was 3 years after this policy had been drafted, however, in August 1998, that this policy was passed by University Senate. Apart from minor wording changes requested by the Faculty Association, the only apparent reason for such a lengthy delay in approving the policy was that the draft policy had "sat" on administrators' desks for some time. Ironically, while it did so, some other Canadian Universities had used our policy as a model for their own. At least we were playing a leadership role and making a positive difference on other campuses!

The office tower where I met my lawyer for the first time was an impressive structure inside and out. With my battered old professor's briefcase and sandals I felt a little, well, out of place. My discomfort dissipated quickly, however, as I noted that this lawyer was bright and quick to get to the point in our discussions, but at the same time clearly compassionate in learning about what I had been going through for so many years. After we discussed some of the key facts in nay case he looked me in the eye and said, "You know there is no way you should have to hire a lawyer on your own?" He was referring to the fact that our Faculty Association had at that time refused to take action on my case. Without hesitation I replied, "I know." We then discussed how a poorly paid professor whose salary had been frozen since 1990 could afford the legal costs that would accrue if he represented me, and worked out a viable arrangement.

Leaving the office tower I felt, for the first time in many years, that there might be hope of a fair resolution to my case. Perhaps even one that would allow me to do the work I loved to do without constantly being forced to contend with the systemic barriers to fair treatment and inclusion that human rights laws are meant to address.

Legal Struggles

Taking legal action against an employer is never easy; particularly in cases where an individual is up against a large, powerful institution such as a University. But after 9 years of futile struggles to have accommodation issues addressed through internal channels, I was convinced that I had been left with no other choice. While a University-wide accommodation policy had been adopted, and I had even worked on developing parallel policies for groups such as graduate students, my case and others indicated that it was one thing to have such policies "on the books" and quite another to ensure that they were implemented.

At the end of August 1999 my lawyer notified the Provost that he was representing me in my legal dispute with the University and that he hoped we could move toward a swift resolution of this matter. To his dismay, it was not until he sent a second letter that he finally received a reply on November 10 from the Provost. This was followed two weeks later by a letter dated November 24 in which the Provost outlined the University's proposed revised accommodation plan.

After outlining aspects of the history of my case, the Provost's letter stated the University's position on its handling of my accommodation case, namely, that because my initial 1994 accommodation agreement had released me from undergraduate teaching and undergraduate teaching was in their view an essential duty of a Professor, that "... the arrangements that have been made with you since your disability have exceeded the University's duty to accommodate your disability. However, because of the history and particular circumstances of your case, the University is prepared to continue to make an individual arrangement with you on a gratuitous basis ...". This statement clearly put a very interesting spin on the University's duty to accommodate a disabled professor. Apparently, not only had the University not violated my human rights for almost a decade but, further, it had done even better at accommodating me than the law required! I could almost envisage a University lawyer waggling his finger at me in a scolding and patronizing manner and saying something such as "Now really, Dr. Chouinard, what could you have been thinking in claiming that your human rights have been violated?!" This image became sharper as I contemplated the related implicit message that any accommodation arrangement with me was being made out of kindness to an individual faculty member and not because the University had any legal obligations to do so.

Before I concluded in despair that I really was, like Alice, stuck in some perversely "mad" tea party, my lawyer provided some reality checks on the University's portrayal of my case. He quickly noted that claims about undergraduate teaching being an essential duty of a professor's job would not stand up in a court of law precisely because case law on accommodation clearly shows that a modification of the range and types of duties done by employees can be a fair and reasonable response to disabled workers' accommodation needs. Further, the only way in which a large employer such as a University could plausibly argue to have exceeded their legal duty to accommodate is in a situation where either the costs of doing so would be unreasonable or the rights of all employees to health and safety in the workplace would be jeopardized. As the latter didn't pertain in my case, the University could only have "exceeded its duty to accommodate" my disability if the costs associated with doing so threatened the viability of the entire enterprise. This is a difficult criterion to satisfy in any accommodation case (particularly since accommodation costs are usually minimal), but is especially difficult in cases where large employers are involved.

Having 'spun' the University's prolonged failure to adequately accommodate a disabled professor into a contrary, highly benevolent image, the Provost's letter went on to outline the University's proposals for my future accommodation in the workplace. These included a modest salary increment, and assurances that my performance would be evaluated on the basis of duties I remained responsible for. It also proposed, however, that because of what was referred to as a "reduced workload" (rather than a full-time modified one) the monetary value of any earned career progress merit increments would be reduced by 50 percent. It was noted that there might be an LTD (long-term disability insurance) component to my remuneration but was not clear about whether or not this would involve the 80/20 claw-back arrangements I had criticized as unfair in my earlier memo to the Provost.

One of the interesting things about legal battles is how important language is in framing positions taken and representing discriminatory acts and inactions as anything but. At first glance, for instance, it might seem "logical" and reasonable that an employee on a so-called "reduced" workload should be denied one-half the monetary value of any salary increments earned through career progress. On closer scrutiny, however, such an argument implicitly treats the accommodation of a disabled employee, through measures such as modified duties or hours of work, as if this is the same as an employee who voluntarily elects to change their contractual relationship with an employer by working fewer hours or at altered duties. In doing so, it fails to recognize that disabled employees face systemic barriers to equality in employment vis-a-vis their able counterparts, and that therefore different treatment may be required to help ensure more equitable employment outcomes. In this context, one might reasonably ask why an employer would be justified in compounding the disadvantages a disabled worker faces by denying her or him earned salary increases. If it is acknowledged, further, that it is possible for a disabled employee to work full-time at a range of duties modified in order to accommodate disability, then any apparent "fairness" to denying them earned salary increases quickly evaporates: after all, this would amount to enshrining permanent salary discrimination into an accommodation plan, something which is clearly an oxymoron!

In my experience, unravelling the logic, illogic, rhetoric and reality in such arguments is a constant challenge in struggles for fair and reasonable accommodation in the academic workplace. This may in part be attributed to the fact that Universities and employers generally are often "learning as they go" when accommodation issues arise because we are not yet at the point where inclusive and fair responses to needs associated with diversity are a taken-for-granted part of our working lives. But there is also an element of 'hard-nosed' negotiating aimed at limiting, as opposed to recognizing and taking responsibility for, the duty to accommodate in practice in cases such as mine.

In a December 17, 1999 letter responding to the University's latest proposals on dealing with my case, my lawyer outlined our objections in detail. The letter stressed the need to view my workload as a different but not inherently "lesser" or reduced one and pointed out that modification of duties was a common legal remedy in accommodating disabled workers. It noted that the Provost's proposals failed to respond to the outstanding issue of salary shortfalls since 1994 resulting from a salary frozen in 1990, shortfalls in excess of those covered by the 1998 one-time lump sum payment made to me by the University. Nor did it provide assurance that my salary would not be reduced by 20 percent of any future earned increments under the proposed "clawback" scheme with the University insurer. Qualifications in how the Provost's letter discussed methods to bring my salary to a fair and equitable level, notably the phrase that this would occur in a manner consistent "the standards generally expected of Professors at McMaster," were flagged as vague and confusing. The letter went on to note that the University's position on its duty to accommodate in my case would be very difficult to defend as a matter of law, for the legal reasons already outlined above, and cited a recent Supreme Court case reiterating that legal standard for accommodating workers with disabilities required every possible accommodation to the point of demonstrable undue hardship: "... whether that form takes the form of impossibility, serious risk or excessive cost" (British Columbia, Superintendent of Motor Vehicles) v. British Columbia (council of Human Rights) (No. 26481, para 32) cited in private communication). Before outlining an alternative proposed accommodation plan which did not contain the discriminatory elements proposed by the University, the letter expressed concern about the University's failure to acknowledge its duty to accommodate disabled workers:

It was disappointing that your letter chose not to acknowledge the University's duty to accommodate disabled faculty and the related fact that accommodation of special needs is a term and condition of employment at McMaster University under its own institutional policies. It is misleading, in this context, to suggest that any accommodation agreement reached with Dr. Chouinard is an individual or gratuitous arrangement. ! believe it is also short-sighted since, with an aging population, the incidence of disability is on the rise. McMaster will have to find ways of accommodating disabled faculty in the future and the longer this is delayed the worse the repercussions on the institution will be. (Letter to Provost, December 17, 1999, p. 3)

An intense year of such legal struggle would ensue before, on December 5, 2000, a decade after my struggles for accommodation had commenced, I reached an out-of-court legal settlement with the University. According to that settlement, the University agreed to act upon its legal duty to accommodate disabled employees by working out the details of an accommodation plan with me, to compensate me for past lost wages, and to adjust my salary to a level appropriate to my status as a Full Professor (without the discriminatory 20 percent clawback provisions). And I agreed to have "some involvement in undergraduate teaching." There is no doubt that the settlement was a formal victory in terms of human rights--at long last there was formal recognition of the University's duty to provide reasonable accommodation of my needs as a disabled professor and employee, and efforts to enshrine ongoing discriminatory salary provisions had failed. What was much less clear was whether or not it would turn out to be a substantive victory.

From Formal to Substantive Rights= the Struggle for an Accommodation Agreement Continues

After a decade-long, difficult and personally costly struggle for a reasonable and equitable accommodation, it was tempting to see the legal settlement of late 2000 as a marking a fundamental turning point in my relations with my University employer--as opening a new, more hopeful and less adversarial chapter in efforts to work out the details of a reasonable accommodation plan. And it was in such a frame of mind that I initially contemplated meeting with colleagues in positions of administrative authority to finally work out details of a new accommodation plan.

To my dismay, despite repeated requests on my part and on the part of the University's Anti-discrimination Officer for an initial meeting on this matter, it was 8 months before the Acting Provost finally called such a meeting in August 2001. The meeting, which included the new head of our Human Resources department, the Acting Dean of Science, the Acting Director of my home academic unit (then known as the School of Geography and Geology), the University's Anti-Discrimination Officer, the Acting Provost and myself, focused on the sometimes contentious issue of how I would fulfill my commitment to do "some form of undergraduate teaching." This was an ongoing source of contention between myself and the University because, with an activity-sensitive illness such as rheumatoid arthritis, I was limited in the amount and type of undergraduate teaching I could do (needing for example to work at home for a significant proportion of any given work week to manage pain and fatigue). The University, on the other hand, was demanding that I take on a large proportion of a "normal" able undergraduate teaching load (3 courses in my home academic unit).

If I had had any illusions that things were going to be different in terms of my experiences of "accommodation," these were, at least for the shortterm, dashed at that meeting. It was quickly apparent that the sole focus of the meeting would be on how I would fulfill my commitment to have "some form of involvement" in undergraduate teaching rather than also on my accommodation needs (as the legal settlement required). Equally problematic were the facts that, due to staff turnover (including the departure of the University's Equity Officer who had previously assisted in my case), the only two persons in the room familiar in detail with the facts of my case were the Acting Provost (formerly the Dean of Science under whose authority my home academic unit fell) and myself. This in part helps to explain why most of those in positions of authority sat silently around the table, as a clearly hostile, and angry Acting Provost dismissed every suggestion that I, with the help of the Anti-discrimination Officer, put forward in terms of undergraduate teaching (e.g., for a distance education course) with the same unhelpful comment: "Oh, that will never work." With little support from those around the table, apart from the Anti-Discrimination Officer, and after an hour or so of being subjected to this over and over again tears of frustration, anger and disappointment welled in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. I remember how impassively almost all of those around the table reacted to my obvious, and humiliating, distress and how alone this made me feel. As the meeting mercifully finally drew to a close I remember composing myself and insisting to the Acting Provost afterwards that we had to work more constructively to resolve this matter. Nonetheless, I left feeling deeply angered and frustrated at the destructive nature of the proceedings.

In hindsight, and after a discussion with a female colleague who had had similar experiences as a result of speaking out on different issues at the University, I realized that I was in some ways being "punished" for being outspoken for so many years on accommodation issues and for taking legal action against the University. Perhaps more importantly at least some of those in senior positions of authority were continuing to construct my own and others' efforts to press for my reasonable accommodation as a negative "problem" as opposed to part of a much needed solution. Needless to say, the persistence of such negative constructions of disability advocacy is another powerful way in which disabled faculty and their allies are marginalized and sometimes silenced.

The meeting described above served as an important reality check on my hopes for a more collegial resolution to my accommodation as a disabled faculty member. I was beginning to realize that even with a legal settlement in place the University administration was not necessarily going to cooperate in efforts to work out the reasonable accommodation plan the law required. As the Anti-Discrimination Officer and ! continued to press unsuccessfully for the follow-up meeting that had been agreed to at the August meeting, the chances of a purely internal resolution grew steadily more dim. In November 2001 I contacted my lawyer to voice my concerns about the University's non-compliance with the legal settlement. By this time I was working fulltime, and without an accommodation plan in place, as Acting Director of the Women's Studies Program a position I had accepted both because of my enthusiasm for the program and because it offered a more collegial and supportive environment for myself and my graduate students than we had experienced in my home academic unit. This unaccommodated situation was, however, seriously taxing my health and my capacities to manage symptoms such as pain and fatigue.

From the Fall term of 2001 to the Fall term of 2002, the only accommodation-related discussions I had were with the Director of the School of Geography and Geology and these concerned only what I would contribute to the School in terms of undergraduate teaching at such time as when I was no longer Acting Director or Director of Women's Studies (the latter a five year appointment which I accepted in 2002-03). The Acting Provost, subsequently once again the Dean of Science, having apparently washed his hands of any further accommodation discussions. Resolving this matter had been left in the hands of the Director of the School.

By the Fall of 2002 the Director was proposing the following undergraduate teaching arrangement: that I would financially compensate the School on an annual basis for costs associated with the teaching of a 3 unit undergraduate course and that I would teach two 3 unit courses (bringing the total with financial compensation for the 3 unit course to the 9 units normally taught by faculty). One of the interesting things about this proposal, as the Anti-Discrimination Officer observed, was that it was about accommodating the University's needs rather than mine. My lawyer agreed, noting that the duty to accommodate was the University's legal obligation not mine, and that he had never heard of the beneficiary of an employment accommodation being required to financially compensate a employer for fulfilling their legal obligation. Another reminder, although I no longer needed any, that whatever the intentions of those involved, responses to struggles for accommodation in academia at least sometimes take on a perverse illogic all of their own.

At my lawyer's suggestion, I approached the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) to see if they would be willing and able to provide legal advice in my ongoing efforts to negotiate an accommodation plan with the University. They agreed, noting that my case was a particularly severe one and encouraging me to also try once again to work with my Faculty Association. I had tried for many years to enlist the Association's formal support in my struggles for accommodation, but whenever I did so they refused, reiterating the administration's position that this was an individual, private affair between myself and the University--comparable to early retirement. One of the problems with this position (aside from the fact that my struggles were about employment not retirement) was that it failed to recognize the University's legal duty to accommodate any disabled faculty person. Moreover, after the University's accommodation policy was passed by Senate in 1998, this position failed to recognize that accommodation was a term and condition of employment under the institution's own policies! For reasons I don't fully understand, although these certainly included an Association president who seemed resolved to help me get the right thing done, this time I was finally able to enlist the formal support of the faculty association. This support was important not only in providing another impetus to efforts to get a new accommodation plan in place in my case, but also because it (at least hopefully) signalled that other faculty were now prepared to treat accommodation of diversity as a matter of collective concern and entitlement.

With the advice and assistance of CAUT, and the support of the University Faculty Association, we were finally able to bring the relevant persons in positions of administrative authority back into the discussion of what a new accommodation plan would look like (those persons included the new Provost of the University, the Dean of Science, the Director of my home academic unit, the new head of Human Resources, and the University Anti-Discrimination Officer). A year of negotiations would take place until finally, in late 2003, three years after the legal settlement and 13 years after my struggles for accommodation had begun, an accommodation plan had been developed that the University and I were prepared to sign. That plan acknowledged the University's obligations to provide reasonable accommodation of my needs as a disabled faculty member in accord with its own institutional policies, the legal settlement of December 2000 and the Ontario Human Rights Code. It was agreed that my workload would be a modified one which placed greater emphasis on research and graduate teaching than undergraduate teaching and service activities. My undergraduate teaching load would consist of one undergraduate course (taught for the Women's Studies program as long as I was Director and subsequently for my home academic unit). The plan provided, in partial compensation for the toll that protracted conflict had taken on my capacities to engage in research work, a one year research leave. I had also experienced difficulties in getting the University (via the Dean of Science) to provide lab space for one of my research projects and so the plan committed the University to providing accessible space for this. Other difficulties in my home academic unit, such as meetings and events in inaccessible locations and failure to notify me when important and time-sensitive materials arrived for me in the main office were also addressed. Importantly, the plan provided for sensitivity training for faculty, staff and students on accommodating the needs of disabled faculty and employees more generally.

The signing of an accommodation plan in late 2003 was without a doubt a milestone on the long and difficult road to accommodation. It was hard-won, through the determination and persistence not only of myself but of those others who came to my assistance along the way. And it provided a framework through which we could at least begin to translate formal human rights into substantive practices. Did it resolve all of the accommodation issues that I faced? No. Did it ensure that I would have an accommodated workload? Only in part. Did it mean that at long last I would no longer have to fight for the right to reasonable accommodation? Unfortunately not.

For the fight for accommodation of disability and other aspects of diversity will necessarily remain an ongoing and unfortunately never-ending one until everyone in every workplace (and beyond the workplace as well) is prepared to acknowledge that those of us who are different from able and other norms still "belong" and can make equally important, if in some ways different, contributions. That, for example, having faculty who are disabled provides important opportunities to learn from first-hand knowledge (and in my case through research on disability issues as well) about the challenges disabled people face and what can be done to diminish these. As human rights and equity specialists know when those who are "different" face barriers to inclusion and wellbeing, different (not special) treatment may be required to ensure equality of outcome. And different is not inherently "lesser" or "a problem"--it is oftentimes simply different. When all of us take those lessons to heart we will be well on the way to building the more inclusive world that everyone deserves.

Epilogue

A part of me wishes I could end this story on a "happily ever after" note. But that, unfortunately, would be a fiction. So instead I will say a little about what has happened since 2003 and what, if anything, we can learn from it. Directing the Women's Studies program (a position from which I stepped down in July 2007) was in many ways an exciting and fulfilling experience. Although I had been part of the Women's Studies Advisory Committee from the inception of the program, being the Director brought me into more regular contact with enthusiastic and dedicated feminist scholars and students and provided me with a work environment more supportive than what I had known previously (which over the years had had many elements of what experts refer to as a "poisoned work environment"--something which made my working life and struggles for accommodation especially difficult). However, it was an often stressful challenge to direct a program which, despite its importance in providing a safe and supportive space for women and feminist inquiry on campus, remained very marginalized in terms not only of resources but in some ways of respect. In 2004, the challenging politics of directing the program combined with the strains of having to continue to struggle for accommodation and a largely unadjusted workload took their toll and ! slipped into a deep depression from which it would take me two long years to gradually recover. It was at this time that I was diagnosed with a second chronic, debilitating illness: bipolar disorder (sometimes referred to as a mood disorder or manic-depression), often characterized by a vulnerability to prolonged periods of depression and brief episodic periods of agitated thought and behaviour. I was devastated by this diagnosis for many reasons--not the least being the knowledge that, if disclosed, I was likely to be constructed as even more negatively different than in the past, in light of the extreme stigma that still attaches to any form of mental illness. More positively, however, it has taught me first-hand about how marginalizing and silencing such stigmas remain and how important it is that we challenge them. I was also interested to learn, from the writings of a psychiatrist with manic depression, that this illness is often associated with gifted accomplishments in fields as varied as music, writing, painting and research (Jamison, 1996). Who knows, maybe being different from the norm isn't always such a entirely "bad" thing?!

I returned to directing the Women's Studies program in the 2006-07 academic year, stepping down in July 2007 to take a regular 6-month research leave (primarily to start research on disabled women's and men's lives in the developing nation of Guyana). I began preparing to return to my position in what is now the School of Geography and Earth Sciences. As part of those preparations, I met with the Acting Director of the School to discuss what my undergraduate teaching might consist of. It was a collegial meeting and I was convinced that he was willing to learn more about the University's accommodation policy and my own accommodation situation. Nonetheless, one of his comments, although clearly well-intentioned, worried me: "Well, if you can't do the job (i.e., the full load of "normal" undergraduate teaching) why not go on disability benefits "and just do research"? Life's too short." There were eerie echoes here of earlier claims that being disabled meant I no longer "belonged" in the regular academic workplace. He was absolutely right that life is too short but is it too short to stand up for our human rights? I hope not. By the way, anyone for tea?

References

Besio, K. and D. Butz. "The Value of Autoethnography for Field Research in Transcultural Settings" Professional Geographer vol. 56 no. 3 (2004), pp. 350-360.

Besio, K. "Telling Stories to Hear Autoethnography: Researching Women's Lives in Northern Pakistan", Gender, Place and Culture vol. 12, no. 3 (2005), pp. 317331.

Chouinard, V. "Like Alice Through the Looking Glass: Accommodation in Academia" Resources for Feminist Research vol. 24, nos. 3/4 (1995/96), pp. 3-10. Crang, M. and I. Cook. Doing Ethnographies, Sage Publications, 2007.

Ellis, C. "Evocative Authoethnography: Writing Emotionally About Our Lives." In Tierney and Lincoln, eds., Representation and the Text: Reframing the Narrative Voice, 1997, pp. 116-139

Ellis, C. and A.P. Bochner. "Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Research as Subject." In N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln, eds., Handbook of Qualitative Research, Sage Publications, 2000, pp. 733-768.

Jamison, K. Redfield. Touched with Fire, Simon and Schuster, 1996. Mahanti, M. "Mapping Race and Gender in the Academy: The Experiences of Women of Colour Faculty and Graduate Students in Britain, the U.S. and Canada" Journal of Geography in Higher Education vol. 28, no. 1 (2004), pp. 91-99.

Robert EM. and S.L. Harlan "Mechanisms of Disability Discrimination in Large Bureaucratic Organizations: Ascriptive Inequalities in the Workplace," The Sociological Quarterly no. 47 (2006), pp. 599-630.

Schwandt, T.A. Sage Dictionary of Qualitative Inquiry, Los Angeles, California: Sage Publications, 2007.

Vera Chouinard

School of Geography and Earth Sciences

McMaster University

Hamilton. Ontario