The Virus You Forgot to Panic For

Just over a month ago, Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow announced that Harvard would fully transition to virtual instruction by Monday, March 23. This remarkable feat was possible thanks to “a group of extremely dedicated people … working literally around the clock to respond to challenges posed by COVID-19,” according to Bacow’s email.

As a Harvard graduate student with a chronic autoimmune disease — and thus at high risk of getting very sick from COVID-19 — I appreciate this decisive action and similar ones made by other institutions. At the same time, the efficient responses and executions offer a painful contrast to the daily indifference long endured by people with disabilities.

It only takes one single email announcement from the administration to change how more than 36,000 people in the Harvard community live and learn. Yet, as an advocate for people with disabilities, I am keenly aware that there is no amount of advocacy work that would manifest such accommodations for us, let alone see them enacted in a single day. COVID-19 has revealed the truth: We have been entirely capable of making the accommodations people with disabilities demanded all along. The lack of will to do so is ableism.

When I was paralyzed from the waist down in my first year at Wellesley College, my 58-year-old mother carried me to class up a hill and a long flight of stairs. I would have to retake the course next semester if I had another absence because of my lupus flare-up. The writing program policy makes no distinctions between excused and unexcused absences so it did not matter that I was in the emergency room last night, and in too much physical pain to concentrate and participate. The policy was firm — affirming the only valid form of presence as visible and physical while denying all unseen values that make us present: the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.

At Harvard, I have had to drop a course deeply meaningful to me because similar policies were enforced: I would lose half a grade for each missed class. While I do not plan on being absent and understand that such policies intend to create a committed community, my disabled body can neither give nor learn from such a commitment. I cannot and do not wish to master, overcome, and transform my body. I can and must live with my lupus, accept my body, and ask to be accepted as I am.

Unfortunately, such stories are not unique. Most workplaces do not think seriously about access. The consistent message that people with chronic illnesses receive is: “If you feel sick, DO come to work.” People with disabilities who request accommodations often hear the following: that there are significant technological challenges to overcome; that we are burdening others with additional labor; that to make an exception for us would be unfair to those who need none. In a society where everyone is susceptible to COVID-19, the absence of these excuses indicates that the only reason has been ableism, plain and simple. As workplaces and institutions are transitioning with such speed to virtual communities, it is clear that we have been equipped for the technological challenges, that everyone can familiarize themselves with alternative platforms, that it has always been possible to assess students fairly without timed physical exams that favor able-bodies, and that it was never unfair to demand resources and access that account for our physical realities.

Though responses to COVID-19 reveal the structures of exclusion, they have also unveiled all bodies as what bodies are — vulnerable, malleable, and hoping to live. When we are forced to envision the disturbing possibility that all bodies can fall ill and become disabled, we can no longer conceive the only body as the able body and label others as frightening and defective or special and inspirational. We must recognize that with or without COVID-19, all bodies experienced disability at birth and many will again in their lifetime in a society where access is not a priority. When I could not walk, I was not disabled until policies designed for able-bodies demanded my physical presence in the classroom and failed to consider widely-available technology like Zoom that could have brought the classroom to me in bed. The body does not disable. Society’s unwillingness to accommodate the imperfect body is what discriminates and disables. Once we understand this, our response can begin to look like what access should have been all along.

Here is my dream: That for each change towards inclusion we make in response to COVID-19, we commit to exploring how it can continue to remain in effect for people with disabilities after COVID-19. COVID-19 may pass, but no scientist is working on a cure for the pandemic of ableism. The actions towards inclusion that stem from your panic are all we have — and all we need.

Connie Chen is a first-year graduate student at the Harvard Divinity School.