Anti-Ableist Amherst: My Hopes for the New Student Center

As I’m graduating this semester, I will unfortunately not be here to witness the opening of the long-awaited and much-discussed new Student Center and Dining Commons in the fall of 2026. Regardless, I feel strongly that Amherst students of the present and future deserve a place that will serve their needs beyond the classroom.

Resource centers at Amherst have a powerful ability to set the tone of Amherst’s social experience. In my previous article, “Disabled Students Deserve a Resource Center,” I expressed my appreciation for Keefe Campus Center’s Queer Resource Center (QRC) and Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) — spaces which have fundamentally shaped and enlivened my Amherst experience, providing me with a sense of community and home in an unfamiliar place. These centers, by existing as physical spaces that overtly support students with marginalized identities, have allowed me to both commiserate and celebrate with students from all walks of life. The centers’ programmed events (executed by tireless employees, student and full-time staff alike) and informal drop-in spaces have created an incredible sense of support for me. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the QRC and MRC, and I believe that a disabled resource center could provide the same immeasurable benefits to future disabled students of Amherst College that I have been so lucky to enjoy.

With the new Student Center and Dining Commons, I see a clear and exciting opportunity to carve out an intentional space for disabled and neurodivergent students. I hope that administrators will take these suggestions into consideration when programming within this new space begins. Beyond the legally-mandated physical accessibility (which is absolutely essential and presumably goes without saying), a space for disabled and neurodivergent students should be actively welcoming. As we all know, creating a welcome environment is about not just equality, but equity. While building the environment is crucial, the attitude around it is similarly important: How do we ensure that all Amherst students, including students who engage with the world differently than the normative neurotypical and/or able-bodied standard, have the conditions they need to flourish? 

A space for disabled students should cultivate and foster disability and neurodiversity as points of resilience, beauty, creative adaptability, and pride — openly rejecting the narratives of shame and silence surrounding certain forms of difference. Disability, as I have described in the past, has often been posited as something that must remain hidden; an embarrassing difference that cannot be shared. As I’ve aimed to bring disability into the conversation at Amherst, a designated space could ensure that differences in ability and neurotype remain something that Amherst students — especially the able-bodied and neurotypical students — approach with thoughtfulness, understanding, and compassion. While obviously such a space would be cultivated for the explicit benefit of disabled students, events and information targeting abled students would challenge them to acknowledge disability as simultaneously a natural human difference and a site of social marginalization. Programming through a designated resource center could better educate and enrich the entire community. 

A disabled student center should include a hired full-time staff member who can empathetically care and advocate for students with varying needs and means of communicating, ensuring that no Amherst student falls through the cracks in the hustle and bustle of the school year. This is especially pertinent given Amherst’s dismissal of multiple beloved staff members at Keefe Campus Center earlier this year, which came as a shock to many members of the community. A staff member trained in contemporary social understandings of disability could be able to help students understand their Americans with Disabilities Act rights, and help students strategize and plan for success in academic and social settings alike. 

In many respects, I remain hopeful about the future of Amherst. The dialogue I have had with people who have read my writing on disability has been immensely encouraging. The Amherst administration has the powerful opportunity to shape and potentially even substantially improve campus culture, reorienting it to include and honor a minority group that has seldom been prioritized. The choices made by the administration will reflect its commitments, its orientations, and more fundamentally, its values. For everyone returning in the fall semester, I urge you to do whatever is in your power to work towards an environment of warmth and care for disabled and neurodivergent people here, through whatever changes may come.