The Wright Stuff
The New York Times recently reported that Dartmouth President James Wright has started an important and long overdue program to provide individualized college counseling to seriously injured and disabled veterans.
After visiting wounded veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medial Center, Wright – a former U.S. Marine - realized that to get an education, disabled veterans would need individualized counseling that would be hard to come by once they left active duty.
“Some [of the veterans] said they wanted to go to college, some didn’t. Some said things like, ‘Because I’ve lost my legs, I need a place with elevators, and I don’t know if the school close to my home has them.’”
Wright started looking for a way meet these veterans’ needs. He contacted David Ward at the American Council on Education, who agreed to help develop the program. Wright helped raise $300,000 and this spring, educational counselors are working at Bethesda, Walter Reed and Brooke Army Medical Center. In the program’s first week, more than fifty veterans asked for appointments with the counselors and now about one hundred wounded veterans are being served.
Because of advances in medical care, the survival rate for service members with serious injuries is far higher in Iraq and Afghanistan than in previous wars. These circumstances have created a group of young men and women who must remake their lives with brain injuries, amputations and other significant impairments.
James Wright has done something important and he is to be commended. Colleges and universities across the country need to evaluate the degree to which they are prepared to accommodate and integrate these returning veterans into campus life.
A good way to start is to utilize the expertise of disabled students, faculty and staff on campus. Administrators should work with disabled people to assure that adaptations to the physical environment and changes in policy and practice are comprehensive and effective. This is the only way that efforts to enhance integration will be successful. In addition to the expertise that may be found on campus, other useful resources are local Independent Living Centers and A.H.E.A.D. (the Association of Higher Education and Disability).
It is also important to remember that elevators are just the beginning. Colleges and universities must dismantle the physical and institutional barriers that have historically faced - and continue to face - disabled people on campuses across the United States. Coupled with Wright’s wonderful initiative, this type of work can and will make a huge difference in the lives of these veterans.
