Is the University of Maine paying attention to LD 46? This bill, currently referred to the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee, will create the opportunity for UMaine to open campus life and resources to students with intellectual disabilities for which Accessibility Services would provide insufficient support.
Maine young adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) deserve a credentialed pathway from secondary to postsecondary education. With all its implications for personal growth and social connection as well as book learning and vocational preparation, the state’s premier R1 university owes its student body more chances to share space with ability-diverse peers who are too often excluded, isolated and ignored. With only two Maine colleges offering any Inclusive Postsecondary Education (IPSE) pathways at all, there are too many students leaving high school unable to move away from home into what we, as Americans, think of as a crucial life transition toward independence and job security—a young person’s university years.
While it’s true that not everyone, abled or otherwise, needs to go to college and we, in fact, need more workers in blue collar trades, the programs that LD 46 proposes to allocate funding for via competitive grants would focus on job readiness and employability in a number of these trades, while crucially allowing participants to experience life on-campus and build a social network outside their families. If UMaine isn’t already fully behind this bill becoming law and our Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies isn’t halfway to planning a grant application already, why not?
