SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento State University is making it a priority to make students with disabilities feel welcomed and accepted. Last year, the university opened the Disability Cultural Center, which is the first of its kinds in the CSU system.

The center provides students with disabilities a place to decompress without the fear of social stigma from classmates. They also have access to resources, such as counseling and technology. Reports show people with disabilities are less likely to complete a bachelor’s degree than those without. 

The cultural center offers a sensory room for those feeling overstimulated.

This outlet for students with disabilities provides a similar space to the PRIDE center and the Women’s Resource Center on the college campus.

“We’re hoping that our space will encourage other colleges and other community groups to consider the disabled population as a culture and as a community,“ said Shannon Brown, the office manager at the Disability Access Center.

Brown, who is neurodivergent, is also a student at Sac State and takes advantage of the cultural center.

“We feel that having this space is opening doorways for our disabled community, communities across the country. I know that for myself, getting to a point where I saw my disabilities as just another one of my identities took a really long time,” Brown noted.

This space gives Brown a chance to connect with younger students who are still figuring out how to adjust to college life. She hopes the center provides a guiding light for other campuses to follow.

“We’re frequently viewed as a problem that needs a solution, as opposed to people…who the world isn’t designed to fit and we may need to be accommodated. So that you know, we don’t fit the standard mold and that means the mold needs to shift,” Brown adds.

Mary Lee Vance, the director at Sac State’s Disability Access Center, notes there are less than twenty campuses across the country that offer something similar.

“When you look at history, and you look at how disability is viewed as a negative, this is what holds students back. When students don’t feel comfortable with their identity. They’re not going to come out for help,” Vance said.

Vance oversaw the opening of the cultural center, which is something that she says she wished she had when she was growing up.

“It’s not only important that [students] have those legal rights for accommodations, but they also have addressed their personal social needs. Which as any other student campus has a right to… so that’s what this space provides,” Vance said. 

The center has been open for a little over a year. Vance says there isn’t data available yet to see how it’s helped students’ graduation rates. However, she has seen the benefit it provides to the students who have utilized the space.

“When students don’t feel comfortable with their identity, they’re not going to come out for help, they’re not going to come out for accommodations, they’re going to not have good retention. They’re going to drop out, they’re not going to graduate, they’re not going to be able to mix and mingle and succeed [in] society if they continue to believe that their disability is a negative,” Vance emphasized.

As students prepare for the start of fall semester, both Brown and Vance are ready to see the Disability Cultural Center filled with students looking for a place to be their authentic selves.

Stanford and UC Berkeley are the two other schools in California that have a disability cultural center. Twelve more universities across the country are opening up centers.

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