As a black, visually impaired student at NYU Abu Dhabi, I often like to think of myself as hypervisible, and yet, I simultaneously exist in a socially constructed bubble of invisibility by the very community I am surrounded by. While this may feel like the campus equivalent of the “no offense while I proceed to offend you” line, I do think NYUAD has a great community. That said, whether it be the institutional policies that make me an afterthought or the people who contribute to my feeling of being unseen — something that I encounter almost daily — my invisibility is socially constructed.

I can say this for certain after I conducted a social experiment where I pretended I wasn’t visually impaired for two straight years at NYUAD. Those years taught me that without a cane, I could still be recognized as a member of NYUAD’s community. There was a silent acknowledgment that people knew I was there and communicated with me as such. People would not think twice about walking up to me to say “hello” sans cane or think twice about pairing up with me for group work in class. These nuances are very different with a cane. I go about my day “seeing” people walking on eggshells around me or overanalyzing every interaction to the extent that they would sometimes opt to not interact with me in the first place. While these actions may come from a good place, I end up feeling left out.

My experience of being visually impaired at NYUAD extends far beyond feeling unseen. It is also an acknowledgment of how this invisibility is opportunistically utilized so that one minute everyone is fumbling around me, and the next, I am an icon of diversity to be listened to when Students of Determination Week rolls by. This black or white extreme where I am either listened to or not is incredibly jarring. It feels like I can never fully grasp the fact that I truly belong at NYUAD, outside of being a tokenized, marginalized representative on a very specific occasion of celebrating inclusivity. Every other day after that event, my existence is not as acknowledged. The constant battle between hypervisibility and invisibility can be an incredibly difficult one to fight.

That being said, I do not want to discount the hard work that the Moses Center has put into making people like me feel represented. I appreciate all the resource allocation and advocacy Aisha al-Naqbi, NYUAD’s liaison for the Moses Centre, carries out daily for students with disabilities. But at the same time, I am also incredibly frustrated with the current state of channels of advocacy for students with disabilities.

The present structure involves a top-down process in which it feels like most advocacy is done for students with disabilities and not with us. For instance, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the school decided to reroute entry and exit points for each building to maximize social distancing. The decision was much needed but came without prior communication: I found myself abruptly thrown into a new landscape, having to relearn routes that already took me months to adjust to, without so much as an avenue to channel my distress. To provide any feedback, I would have had to reach out to al-Naqbi, who would then have to reach out to the Moses Center. Often, I would be left out of communication and processes. Frankly, I mostly never got any closure when it came to voicing my concerns.

On the rare occasion where positive structural changes did occur, I was never credited as the driving force behind them. So, last semester, I joined the Student Government as Diversity Chair in hopes of spearheading policy changes and being credited for them. While those months were some of the most nerve-racking and stress-inducing months of my entire academic career, I did feel a sense of satisfaction with finally being in the loop on matters that pertained most to my NYUAD experience.

Concurrently, that experience also revealed a deeply entrenched issue where students with disabilities are expected to be an expert on disability rights and the mouthpiece for all students with disabilities.

The experience of every student with a disability is different. What works with one person does not work with another. It was, and still is, incredibly difficult toeing this line when it comes to working with the NYUAD administration. In certain situations, important decisions — such as whether the term “students of determination” should be preferred over “students with disabilities'' on a campus flyer — have to be made with the “one size fits the majority” approach. If a single person had to make a call on this decision and chose a specific term over another, that decision would be what stood, without due consideration to how all students with disabilities feel about it. For example, if I gave the go ahead for the term “students with disabilities,” it is not an acknowledgment that every other flyer made in the future should use this term or that all students of similar conditions as myself agree with being referred to like this. It is only a concession that the term could be used on a flyer for a specific event and restricted to that purpose. Notice how my decision to use “students with disabilities” throughout this article is another example, but I digress.

In such instances, I believe greater input from students with disabilities is needed to ensure that a proper majority of affected students benefit from any decision-making process that impacts their lives.

In addition, the administration choosing to comply with democratic means of information collection does not mean all students with disabilities should be required to participate. Neither does it mean that doing so would automatically provide all the needed answers. Students with disabilities do not always need to have the answer to every question related to disability rights or inclusion or be the omniscient go-to when students or the administration need feedback. To be honest, I have been visually impaired since I was seven and I don't even think I can fully ever claim to be knowledgeable about what true inclusion looks like for all visually impaired people. Students with disabilities could be considered experts only when it comes to their own lived experiences and how they have shaped them.

In advocating for myself as well as people like me, I have become quite evaluative of whether I am telling my story right, putting across the right message and leading people to have an inclusive mindset about visual impairment. I am, however, trying to become more self critical of my retelling of disability, while also understanding that it is alright to reach uncomfortable conclusions where I don’t have all the answers. I am learning to tell people that I am scared of being invisible. It’s alright not knowing how best to advocate for myself. Most importantly, to reassure myself that it is alright that I continue to let my voice be heard while I figure out the process of doing so.

While most of the societal issues I face daily are static, my disability is an ongoing journey of deteriorating vision. My face in the mirror is getting blurrier over time and there are often moments when I wonder if I will slowly forget what I look like because I haven’t seen it for a while. I have also become introspective enough to know that the process of going through this does not scare me as much as it used to.

Yet, I can’t help but wonder if I will get to see a time where NYUAD honors its students with disabilities better — accommodating their needs wholly and holistically.