August Geiermann

Leadership LC
Paul Pugh
1/31/2017
Disabilities: The Abled Label

Though I’ve lived with a disability for 18 years now, I will admit that this essay proved

incredibly difficult for me to gain the courage necessary to write it, but in the interest of finally

breaking my silence and maintaining high marks, I relented. This past Thursday, I attended the

LEVEL/Disabling the Label Freedom School presentation, which spoke to me on a level that I

had never felt before, and giving a sense of comprehension that I now realized had only seemed

to exist prior to fully gaining it. I felt like I now understood the true cause of my 18 years of

depression, and that a burden had finally been lifted. My depression had always been, prior to

this awakening, caused by my belief that my disability was inherently abnormal and that I was

less of a person as a result. There had always been people who understood me, whether it be my

high school classmates, dorm mates in St. Monica, or family in the LEVEL program, but I

always thought that those who weren’t in these groups had some varying degree of hesitation in

even approaching me due to sympathy, hatred, or the like. This presentation changed all that, but

the viewpoint I gained was not one of happiness or contentment, but of motivation and drive, a

drive to change something I now knew was not caused by my own “problems.” The problem

wasn’t me, but everyone else; I wasn’t disabled – they were.

At the beginning of the presentation, the faculty leaders first told us to locate the easiest

way into Center City for an able-bodied person via SEPTA, and then find the easiest route for a

disabled individual. The results were striking: even under the best of circumstances, the easiest

route anywhere not traveled to by the Wildcat Shuttles was 3 miles down Lancaster Avenue to
the nearest accessible SEPTA station, as the one on South Campus is not accessible whatsoever,

and West Campus’ is still being modified. I found this out the hard way this past weekend, as I

had received a coveted ticket the UVA-Villanova basketball game on Sunday, and could not

even attend as there was no way to transport my scooter to the game. Being able to share my own

individual plight (of having never really left campus in 5 months) with the other students at the

presentation not only felt liberating, but I could see their outlook and motivations starting to

change as well. The most pivotal moment, however, came when Rachel Heckler, student

presenter, LEVEL member, and a good friend of mine, shared a clip from the Villanova-

produced documentary, Coming Off The DL. In the clip, my good friend Nicholas Gaynor

shared the horrible reality he faced and the stereotype he felt every single day as both he and his

family struggled with the possibility of his never attending senior prom due to a lack of

acceptance. He spoke of his dream of one day raising a family, which really spoke to me.

College freshmen all have the freedom and the rush of being able to pursue whatever interests

they desire, but a multitude of these, like future relationships, felt impossible to him. The most

shocking thing, however, was my discovery of the source of my depression: Nicholas, for all he

overcame, was still wheelchair-bound, while I, despite being significantly more abled, seemingly

shared the same impossibility.

While this may seem like a relatively minor discovery to some, for me it was eye-

opening. The world seemed to be against me, with no one realizing I was a person too, same as

them. I finally knew that I, with my 7 surgeries and far better gait relative to what it once was,

was to them an aberration, a number, a letter. While thinking of how most see me is still

depressing in many ways, I now feel motivated to change that for the better. Over these next
semesters, I aim to paint a new picture of myself as I see me, and allow those who do not yet to

realize the person behind the label. After all, that is LEVEL’s motto: “LEVEL the playing field

by disabling the label.”