Griffin Leistinger, assistant director of disability access and services at Hampshire College and MPPA '23, and Bridgette Davis, assistant professor of public policy, recently published a paper in the Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability. The article, "'Really Fucked Up': The Debilitation of the Accommodation Redemption Process," reveals the less-visible relational strategies often required by professors for students to access their full accommodations. The study was supported by undergraduate researcher Emma Pike-Smith (BS public health '25) and is Leistinger's first peer-reviewed publication.
The study leading to the article was initially conducted by Leistinger as one of the first projects in Davis' Equitable Transitions to Adulthood (ETA) Lab, which was created for young adults to define, study, and shape solutions for policy problems in their own lives based on their lived experience. Davis says, "I'm incredibly proud of this research. Conducted collaboratively with young adults who have lived experience as both service users and policy practitioners, it exemplifies the work we do in the ETA Lab. Instead of eschewing young adults' concerns, we channel them into studies that utilize their insight. This also drives student growth and development."
The research presented in the article brings together three disparate literatures: higher education, public policy, and critical disability studies to detail what they call the "accommodations redemption process" and offers a critique of student self-advocacy as the primary solution to accommodations management. "Practitioners in this field often play a significant role in all matters of disability policy creation, implementation, and education. This research seeks to support our field to articulate processes that may not be readily apparent or named. As we move forward, I hope for these processes to be further illuminated and changed in ways that better support student access," says Leistinger.