While I was unavailable during this period of progress for my group, the changes made were largely around the project pitch. I had signed off for the week with suggestions about exploring Hamilton’s settler colonial history and modern ideas of accessibility. While I was away, this evolved into a comparative evaluation of each institution. We chose to focus on founding documents, largely correspondents and diary entries. To identify each institution’s legacies regarding access from the perspective of student publications. The expectation is that because of the shift in narrator and general increased awareness around access, the rhetoric would begin in arrogance and currently represent a more critical perspective.
The group overall advanced by sourcing dated documentation as well as contemporary. We chose to remain in narrative archives instead of including art or explicit activism for straightforward data collection and visualization, ease in comparisons, and to ensure clear credit for authors. I was not part of the initial conversation to explore each college’s ongoing relationships to the concept of and their respective commitments to access. For Hamilton that does begin with founding members of the college discussing their intentions with and for the Oneida people. For Vassar, the vision was oriented around women.
Hamilton’s most recent and prominent discourse around accessibility is the lack of infrastructure and care for students. In my personal experience, I have identified it by talking to professors from other institutions who are mortified by our academic and physical accessibility protocols. Additionally, it is clear in everyday navigation of the campus how many students have to provide their own support infrastructures. This was brought to the campus community’s attention when a student transferred out of Hamilton. This was the catalyst for a series of investigative journalism pieces from multiple student publications. I collected, summarized, and shared these with my group.
