Something fated -- Part 2

Micah Fialka-Feldman, a 25-year-old continuing education student attending Oakland University near Detroit, is a civil rights pioneer in the same class so to speak as James Meredith, who had to sue to attend and live in the dorms at the University of Mississippi in the 1960’s because he was black. Fialka-Feldman recently won a federal lawsuit analogous to Meredith to be able to do what most students take for granted -- live in a dorm.

Due to his intellectual disability, Fialka-Feldman is not pursuing a degree but instead is enrolled in the University’s Options program. Like similar programs at a growing number of colleges and universities across the country, Options provides students with intellectual and developmental disabilities both the opportunities and supports they need to take courses and make the most of college life.

The University, however, thought that education for someone like Fialka-Feldman should end at the dorm’s door and wanted to bar him from living there, ostensibly because he was not on a degree track. However, as Federal Judge Patrick Duggan ruled, the University also based its actions on his disability or more specifically on “prejudice, stereotype (and) unfounded fears” regarding persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities in particular. Duggan found this violated both the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 5O4 of the Rehabilitation Act.

As a kid with significant disabilities growing up and going to school in the 60’s and 70’s I faced my own share of prejudice, stereotype and discrimination. Fortunately that begun to radically change when I somehow made it into college. College dorm life was the best thing that ever happened to me. For one of the first and the few times in my life, I felt a part of rather than a part from those surrounding me. Obama is President because in large part because now generations of us have grown up learning and living together. It is like the song says: “Come on people now, smile on your brother. Everybody get together try to love one another right now.“ That to me at least is the essence of what a quality liberal arts education ought to embrace and enhance – a richer, deeper understanding of our shared foibles, strengths and capacities – our common humanity.

Oakland University says it is still considering whether to appeal Duggan’s decision. If it does, it may win a reversal and bar Micah from the dorm. Even if this happen, though, justice will eventually win out. "The gradual progress of equality is something fated," de Tocqueville wrote, "every event and every man helps it along". This man and this event are spurring it on more quickly than most. We are all better for it and for that, lets all remember to pay it forward.