Inclusion or Exile: The Disabled Students Experience in College

This article explores the relationship between higher academics and disabled people, focusing specifically on how disabled people are either incorporated or excluded through administrative policing. Drawing extensively from Stiker’s historical analysis of the management of disabled bodies, and his looming conclusion that all forms of ‘management’ are ultimately exclusionary because they seek to normalize the disabled experience, I examine the policies schools use to manage disabled students and see whether or not they are holistically included. Using data collected from three different institutions as well as six disabled students experiences, I outline the effect that medicalized and managerial policies have on student inclusion. Finding that the registration process, and school policies, were particularly ostracizing for disabled students. Intriguingly, the managerial policies and necessitated institutional proximity had a positive impact on identity and legitimacy for some students