"UMass’ campus is not accessible." That is the title of a 2023 op-ed written in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, UMass Amherst's student newspaper. The student writes, "Inaccessibility is glaringly obvious on this campus. A decent portion of doors, especially bathroom doors, do not have automatic door openers, or sometimes even handicap stalls. The dining halls are jam-packed with tables and chairs, allowing no space for someone with mobility issues to move through. The landscape is often rocky and narrow. Elevators don’t work. The list goes on and on."
In an article in Massachusetts Daily Collegian written in 2022, students observed that the university practically hides the resources available to disabled students, citing a lack of outreach from Disability Services and other offices, which can particularly impact first-year students. A student shares, "It has taken time and jumping through endless hoops to find programs like the van service, which isn’t advertised anywhere. Resources outside of Disability Services should be promoted much more than they are so that those who need resources can find them. At this point in time, they’re practically invisible."
"They’re creating these barriers thinking about the people watching, but not the people walking through them," remarked another student in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian.
In the same article, students shared "horror stories" about professors arbitrarily ignoring their accommodations. The campus activist group, Access UMass, has been working with the Student Government Association to petition the administration to implement mandatory sensitivity training for faculty, staff, and students.
During a panel discussion last year, one disabled student described the isolation they experience on campus. "I feel personally very isolated," said the student. "As a student with a disability at UMass I don’t have a sense of community here. And I don’t feel like there are people who can share my experience . . . I feel like I am not adequately supported. I don’t think I matter to UMass. I know I don’t matter."
UMass Amherst is currently ranked 58th among national universities by U.S. News. This is an improvement from 67th place in 2024.
The petition, along with demonstrators, made it clear that the march was about more than just a singular arrest; the UMass community has long experienced an environment of racial tension. There has been a string of racially-motivated incidents in the past year or so, beginning last year with an anonymous anti-Black email sent to Black student groups, continuing with verbal assaults and another email chain targeting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts and a Latino staff member of the College of Engineering. On Nov. 4, a PVTA driver asked a Black student to get off of the bus and called the police after the student boarded the bus with a cup of lemonade.
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“The student’s life has been thrown away just from that simple interaction. And that’s not the first time — that happens all the time. The smallest things, even for the bus situation that happened to these two Black women. [They] came on [the bus] with one drink and had the police called on them…” Deng said.
“Something needs to be changed. We’re demanding that change now. Because it’s not fair — we’re already a small minority on this campus and we’re being targeted for every little thing we do. We’re not safe. We’re not safe anywhere,” Deng continued.
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And one day, on her way to the dining hall to get breakfast, her legs could not hold her.
“I just kind of dropped to the ground,” she remembers. “I was like, ‘This is strange.’ I have a passing out condition. Reflex syncope. But my legs just gave out and I was sitting on the pavement watching all the students like, ‘This is weird but I’ll be fine.’ ”
A friend got a chair from class, one with wheels, and pushed her back to her dorm. Campus police stopped her, but not to help. As she explained what was going on, the officer told her taking property from a federal building is considered a felony.
A young Black girl unable to physically walk was criminalized.
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Students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst are outraged after a racist email blast targeted Black student organizations, the latest in what UMass vice chancellor for diversity Nefertiti Walker called a “disturbing increase in anti-Black racist incidents.”
The email, sent on Sept. 17 from a nonstudent account and signed “UMass coalition for a better society,” uses derogatory language to describe how Black students look and talk, Boston.com reported, asserting that these students only made it to UMass Amherst because they were given an “easy pass.” The email, which was shared by a Black student, is “vile, blatantly racist, and violently offensive,” Walker said in a statement Thursday.
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The UMass Amherst Black Student Union said it took the university almost a month to address the driver incident, adding that its slow response to racial incidents compared to nonracial incidents “is not reflective of a university that claims to be ‘committed in policy, principle, and practice to maintaining an environment which prohibits discriminatory behavior and provides equal opportunity for all persons.’”
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