Revisions to federal regulations require Dartmouth to include data on faculty and staff who self-identify as veterans and people with disabilities in its 2014-15 Affirmative Action Plan, alongside data on gender and race. To comply with the regulations, the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity will analyze how many self-identified veterans and people with disabilities apply, are employed by and leave the College each year.
Dartmouth collects some information on veteran employees but has never published it in the plan, assistant director for equal opportunity and affirmative action William Hankel said.
Hankel, who also works as the College’s Americans with Disabilities Act compliance officer, said the biggest challenge in compiling this data is that veterans and people with disabilities often choose not to self-identify. Hankel said the office is aware of around 60 employees who self-identify as veterans, noting that many staff members have not filled out the self-identification form.
Geisel Medical School professor James Geiling, a U.S. Army veteran, said the number of veteran faculty is probably greater than reported due to a tendency to keep private.
“I think most veterans are proud of their service and would do it again in a heartbeat, but most of them don’t wear it on their sleeves,” Geiling said.
Geling said veteran faculty and students offer a unique perspective, particularly on world affairs, as less than 1 percent of Americans serves in the military.
IDE added a section to its employee self-identification form that asks employees to indicate yes, no or decline to answer whether they have or have had a disability. The form also includes an updated veteran section that asks employees if they are a military veteran and goes on to ask federally protected veterans to check further identifications — disabled veteran, recently separated veteran, active wartime or campaign badge veteran or armed forces services medal veteran.
The office also modified Dartmouth’s online recruitment system to collect information from applicants.
The modified version of the employee form went live in March, but it was not widely advertised to faculty and mostly completed by new hires, Hankel said. IDE vice president Evelynn Ellis said that so far she is the only person who has identified as having a disability. Ellis said the office hopes it will get more responses once the self-identification form is promoted across campus.
“It’s hard for people to self-identify because of the history of this country and how these people have been treated,” Ellis said.
Ellis noted that discrimination is a national issue, not just “an Ivy League problem,” related to ideals of excellence and perfection.
Student Accessibility Services director Ward Newmeyer said the students he works with often report experiencing stigma at a level which he has not seen since his earliest work in the field.
Since Newmeyer came to the College in 2006, he said that while he observes the student body to be “interested and engaged in some ways,” Dartmouth’s culture of individualism and self-sufficiency can reinforce misunderstandings surrounding disabilities.
Newmeyer said he was pleased by the new requirements and noted that nationally very little employment data exists for people with disabilities.
“I always thought it was kind of odd because every other time affirmative action has been contemplated for a group of people who have historically been discriminated against, reporting is required,” Newmeyer said.
Having faculty with disabilities can profoundly affect students, he said, noting that faculty sometimes share that they have disabilities with students who are in the process of obtaining classroom accommodations.
The Americans with Disabilities Act defines a person with a disability as someone with a “physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more ‘major life activities.’”
When 50 students polled by The Dartmouth about a month ago were asked to list three words they most associated with the term “disability,” one male member of the Class of 2016 wrote “beautiful, strong, healthy.” Most others replied with words like “disadvantaged,” “limited” and “invisible.”
Some respondents listed words like “ableism” or “misunderstood,” calling attention to societal responses to those with disabilities.
Many people view disabilities negatively, Newmeyer said.
“We live in a society that doesn’t seem to recognize and certainly doesn’t remind us that there are gifts those experiences give to us,” he said, citing a depth of perspective and introspection in the students he has worked with.
IDE expects to release its 2014-15 Affirmative Action Plan report to the public in March.
