A Brief Goodbye to Warren Wilson College From a Disabled Student
Eli Styles | May 2, 2024
Dear Warren Wilson,
What a privilege it has been.
In the eight months since I arrived at Warren Wilson College (WWC) for the creative writing pre-orientation program, I have learned more about living in a community than I had in the first eighteen years of my life.
I came here afraid. Circumstances beyond my control had left me fearful of fitting into a community that seemed so tight-knit and functional. I craved a change in my life and revered WWC for its one-of-a-kind approach to learning and community, something which I did not feel I had access to experience in my small town.
My time here was a dream — one that sometimes flowed seamlessly into a nightmare.
I went through the typical college adjustment period where I rethought every life decision I had ever made and contemplated dropping everything to go home and live forever as a recluse. Then I acclimated to college life, thankfully, and began to find joy again in the intimate details of living in nature and among people from backgrounds nearly opposite to my own.
I got to know people and they got to know me. I made friends and I wrote a lot, as creative writing majors do, and tried to immerse myself in WWC life — hiking the river trail, lounging in hammocks and writing poems about clusters of flowers or understory plants or whatever else I was assigned to fantasize about.
I loved WWC, and I was proud to be here.
I will be transferring elsewhere in the fall.
The best-kept secret of WWC is that it exists on the grounds of mistruth. Never in my life have I been subject to such severe levels of performative activism, peer harassment and lack of community care or repercussions for those who perpetuate the very ideals that WWC claims to be against.
I cannot speak for the experience of every WWC student, only my own. And I despise the fact that I have developed such a distaste for this school due to conditions that someone could have easily fixed. I despise that I must choose between staying here for the small community I have found or going somewhere where I can actually access basic necessities for life.
I feared this outcome when I accepted my offer to come to this school. I am Disabled and therefore deal with constant inaccessibility issues that I often am expected to fix on my own. One visit to WWC campus will let you know that it is extremely inaccessible, and knowing my condition I worried that, at some point in the year, my mobility would decline.
Unfortunately, that is the reality that I was recently subjected to. I have been a wheelchair user for a little while now and it has exposed me to the most disgusting behavior and inaccessibility on campus. I provide this information not because I owe it to anyone or because I even really want to, but because I need current and future WWC students to know what it is like to be Disabled at this school.
It is nearly impossible.
There is no excuse for this level of inaccessibility and ignorance at WWC. The idea behind not creating accessible spaces is that there are not enough physically Disabled students to need them — but that mindset mistakes itself. Disabled students are driven out of this college due to inaccessibility or do not come here in the first place. The administration does not acknowledge this because they do not listen.
This could all be changed if the school adopted the idea of proactive accessibility, but I digress. A more in-depth explanation of that concept can be found here.
I am disheartened by the fact that these are my last few days at WWC. Most of my friends are leaving as well for the same reasons as I am. It was less of a choice that we made than a necessity.
I will miss the mountain views, the bear sightings, writing for The Echo Newspaper and especially the Disabled Student Alliance (DSA) that I co-founded with my good friend and roommate, Rowan Dorrian. The work we have done there has been some of the most fulfilling I have ever been privileged enough to take part in.
And though our posters were ripped down, our concerns were disregarded and we were labeled as aggressors for pointing out blatant accessibility issues, the DSA was able to make true change on campus. A few steps in the right direction are better than none at all, and we hope the DSA continues to make change in the absence of the founders.
I hope the future of WWC is better than the present. I hope that the inaccessibility issues are addressed and this school becomes more organized, taking pressure off of single-person offices to direct all of the goings-on on campus. I hope that others can revere their WWC experience in ways I could not.
I do not regret coming to WWC. I learned so much from this past year in both positive and negative ways, and I would not trade that for a less bumpy ride. I would not trade this knowledge and experience for anything.
But I do caution those coming into WWC with preconceived notions of the community that the college preaches: make these decisions for yourself. This school is deeply broken and attempting to mend, but it is far from missing cracks. You will be frustrated at some point during your tenure here with the way that things run, and you have the power to do something about it.
Make your voice heard. Do not listen to those who tell you you are “doing it wrong.” There is no “right” way to be an activist or to create change. Make a name for yourself, do not let WWC do it for you.
Sincerely,
Eli Styles
P.S. If anyone has questions about accessibility on campus, contact the DSA at @wwc_dsa on Instagram or email estyles.f23@warren-wilson.edu. Good luck!