Without further adieu, welcome to the very first graduation ceremony for disabled students at UCLA! While the Disability Studies department has had its own ceremony to honor their graduates for the last several years, this is the first time that disabled community members are being honored. This celebration was made possible through student organizers in the Disabled Student Union. The DSU was founded in 2020 by students Quinn O’Connor, Nat Decker, Kyle Radwanski Ortega and the late Lily Shaw as a space for improving the lives of disabled UCLA students through community building and advocacy. I discovered the Disabled Student Union in the summer after my freshman year, and it would be an understatement to say that disabled community changed my life.

I was diagnosed with Marfan Syndrome at 18 months old, so I’ve only ever known a reality where I was different. I was always “the one with Marfan Syndrome,” a condition most people learn about for the first time by meeting me. The burden of advocacy from birth or diagnosis is one I’m sure many of you feel, but it’s a power I now hold close to my scarred chest. Despite my lifelong chronically ill diagnosis, I never labeled myself as disabled… Until I first stepped foot on UCLA’s campus. Never had I experienced such pervasive inaccessibility and casual ableism, never had my friends made fun of me for needing to use the elevator, never had I felt so doomed.

My first glimpse out of this sudden, seemingly inescapable darkness, was a 30-minute Zoom consultation with a faculty member from the Disability Studies minor, Dr. Mana Hayakawa, They approached me not only with expertise about the field, but their own experiences with disability. They told me to keep in mind that not all my professors would be disabled themselves. “But,” they said, “it’s always good to know the language of the enemy.” A line of advice I would subconsciously take with me for the rest of my time at UCLA and beyond. They also shared the GroupMe link to the Disabled Student Union, and with that a glimmer of hope became an incalculable relief. I found out there were other people just like me.

I took my first Disability Studies class that Fall, the famous and amazing Disability Studies 101W, and the first thing we learned about was norms, or the socially acceptable, average way to go about living. All of you are defying norms by sitting here today, about to cross this stage.

Being disabled often means to have our fight drained from us. By medical systems, by inaccessibility, by our impairments, by small ableist comments from people around us that build to become crushing, by eugenicist rhetoric from our country and its leaders. Even by our own university, one that often refuses to give us a fair chance at success. But we’ve also slowly gained that fight back. At least for me, that spirit grew out of my community, one I started with that first “hi!” in the DSU group chat at 19 years old.

Two years ago today, I was in the hospital recovering from open heart surgery at 21 years old. Just about a year before that, I led my first protest for disability rights on this campus. One required incredible determination, mental strength, and optimism, while the other was recovering from open heart surgery.

These years have become an opportunity for us to fight back against systems of power that seek to drown out our voices and stifle our very lives. As humans, as disabled people, it is in our nature to resist. It is in our nature to take ownership of the hand we are dealt, strive for our best lives and relent until we can live them.

One of the first things they tell you about post-op recovery is to watch out for signs of depression. No surgery or medication is as dangerous as succumbing to hopelessness in your lowest moments. I’m sure many of us know that without being told. That warning bounced around plenty while I laid there surrounded by mounds of pillows, blankets, and childhood stuffed animals, watching my third or fourth bad Netflix original. It reminded me of my first year at UCLA, completely isolated from anyone who could understand what I was going through.

Despite the pain and weakness, I went to a conference for people with my disability, just three weeks after being under the knife. I looked into the eyes of men and women much older than me, terrified for their futures, not unlike all us here today. All I could tell them is that I survived. I survived and they will, too.

You all are the key to creating a future we can all be proud of, one that we should not have to fear. For better or for worse, UCLA taught us about our own motivations, our wants and needs, and what forces hold us back from that future. What biases we’re feeding and how to squash them. What the world has defined as normal and why that definition doesn’t matter.

We deserve to relish in radical optimism. Surviving should not be a goal, but a bare minimum. The community we’ve created here should be our lifeblood, not rungs on a ladder we need to surpass. Our futures should be in our control, and doing what we love shouldn’t be a pipedream.

The disabled bodymind knows little of “normal.” We know that we deserve better and that we shouldn’t have to beg for the morsels we are owed. We know that groveling will not give us privilege and we know that respect cannot be earned from those who dehumanize us.

Less than one year ago, you all started your final year at UCLA. I had a freshly healed sternum and a new lease on life. I hope that we can now begin to forge a better future with the support of our community, one full of people who know exactly what it feels like to be “abnormal.”

So, I stand here, taller than normal, more scars than are normal, a normal amount of afraid for what comes next, with poorer than normal eyesight, and I can tell you: I survived, you have, too, and we are all so much more.
Thank you and congratulations Class of 2024!