I just wanted to pass on some thoughts I've been carryinging around for a long time about some incidents that happened to me in college in the mid 1980's.

I was enrolled in an English 4000 level class that examined semantics and other aspects of linguistics. I asked the professor for some additional help and was told in no uncertain terms that this would not be fair to the other students in his class. He said that perhaps blind people had no business in English linguistics anyway. It was obviously too hard for them. (I later learned of a blind man who attended Yale and did a doctoral thesis on various aspects of Russian linguistics.) At the time he told me this, I had a 3.89 GPA and was a member of severalhonor societies such as Phi Eta Sigma and Phi Beta Kappa. This was before ADA and I really did not know what to do so I did nothing.

Several years later, I went to a Rehabilitation Centerand learned about advocacy. I wrote the head of the English Department a letter detailing the professor's attitude that caused me to get a c minus and caused me to lose the chance I had wanted to graduate Suma and had to settle for cum laude instead. Nitpicky, you may say. Well, I worked very hard for my grades and went through an enormous amount of stress to get that degree. I obtained it in 7 semesters and received an award for being the outstanding senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. I say these things, not to brag, but to demonstrate how I felt being told that I should not do linguistics.

I also had a philosophy professor tell me he didn't see ow a blind person could take Philosophy 4010 which dealt with proving all the symbolic logic and predicate calculus argument forms from Modus Ponens.I did not argue as it was not my major as English was. But I think looking back on it, I should have sued the English professor for discrimination and taken the Philosophy class just to show the other prof.

I call these points to your attention as you seem to be a caring bunch of educators. So don't ever assume a blind person can't do something just because they're blind. Allow them the dignity of an honest try. Be willing to help and see how for they'll go. You might be surprised!

Thanks for your attention.

David L. Faucheux

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Yes, some people may be lazy and try to wheedle grades where they clearly didn't deserve them, but I ask you, do you honestly think I did?