By JOHN C. STONER

 

This is going to be one of those pieces that starts with a definition. According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, “accommodation” is “something supplied for convenience or to satisfy a need: such as . . . lodging, food, and services or traveling space and related services” or “the act of accommodating someone or something: the state of being accommodated: such as . . . the providing of what is needed or desired for convenience.” In the contemporary university, we use the term most often to refer to arrangements made for students with verified disabilities or other needs that require accommodations under the regulatory and legal frameworks of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal and state laws. 

 

Yet in doing so, we lose sight of some of the broader ways in which we should be thinking about how we accommodate students more capaciously. Doing so touches on the various forms of diversity we encounter at Pitt and other educational institutions: gender, race, class, ethnicity, political thought, religion and many other ways we all identify and move through the world. Those of us who are faculty also grow older every year (while students tend to remain in the same 18-23 age bracket) and therefore we are often out of touch not just with popular culture (“Tame Impala is so five years ago, John”), but also with how students learn and engage the world from the micro to macro levels. We shake our heads and worry about students running into poles or walking into traffic as they stare at their phones, but we do not always make the effort to understand how generational differences in lived experience and learning styles make students different in ways that require “us” as Pitt faculty and staff to accommodate “you” as students. The definition encompasses both convenience and need and I would respectfully suggest that in fact it is incumbent upon “us” to lean into thinking of the need for accommodation more broadly than those offered through Disability Resources and Services.

 

This year, the University Senate is hosting its annual Spring Plenary on “Rethinking Accommodation.” To accommodate people’s schedules, we do not yet have a date but will be providing one soon. Our goal in this plenary (and perhaps in a number of Senate Matters columns this year) is to think about accommodation more broadly than the legalistic ways in which we use the term most often. Accommodations are where you live, how you get to campus, how we create learning environments to reach everyone (ideally), and how we balance at-times necessary intellectual and personal discomfort while ensuring that you understand why we do so and are not alienated in (and from) the process. 

 

In recent years, our ability to accommodate students while remaining faithful to our core academic mission has only gotten more complicated. Generative AI is bringing to the fore new concerns about academic integrity and often encouraging faculty to resort to very 20th century solutions (timed, in-class exams for example) in order to maintain our sense of integrity (and control). In order for us to accommodate as many as possible, we need to think in more utopian and optimistic terms about accessibility and universal design and how faculty born and (often) trained in the 20th century can embrace difference (shamelessly stealing from the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution) in order to create a more perfect University.

 

John C. Stoner is vice president of the University Senate and teaching professor of history. You can reach him at stonerjc@pitt.edu