Student with dog, oxygen tank wasn’t allowed on the basketball court

From the Chicago Tribune, CBS/AP:

A federal lawsuit filed on behalf of a 17-year-old girl claims that the Special Olympics has improperly barred her from playing basketball in an after-school sports program at her West Chicago high school.

Jenny Youthwith, who has developmental disabilities and a respiratory problem, wanted to play with the help of her dog, Simba, who carries her 4-pound oxygen tanks in gym class and other non-school sports activities.  The girl’s mother says Special Olympics has said only that it’s “not appropriate” for Jennifer to be on the basketball court with the dog or the oxygen tank.

“This is Special Olympics; they should be able to accommodate,” said Janice Youngwith. “If not Special Olympics, where else does she fit in?”

From WSAV TV, Savannah:

A nine-year-old Georgia girl has been closed out of participating in her local Special Olympics because the scheduling of the events clashed with her school schedule. Reagan Argo-Wilbanks, who has Down syndrome, is included in general education classes in the Liberty County School System.

“Because she has classroom subjects with regular students, instead of in all special education, she would miss too much academic instruction to participate,” [the girl's mother] said school officials told her.

Reagan meets Georgia Special Olympics rules, but each county is allowed to run their own games.

“You can’t call it the Special Olympics if you’re adding extra rules to discriminate against kids that would be allowed to participate,” said her mother.

The school district declined to comment.

(Photo from WSAV-TV)

In a Washington Post profile of Tim Shriver, writer Manuel Roig-Franzia examines the Special Olympics chairman’s campaign to discourage language that makes fun at the expense of people with intellectual disabilities.

Shriver has received apologies from President Obama, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Bill O’Reilly (sort of) for “colloquial jabs about ‘retards’ or quips that equate Special Olympians with ineptitude or remarks that equate “retarded” with stupidity.”

To Shriver, the discussion is more than a mere linguistic fight, writes Roig-Franzia; it’s a welcome opportunity to have a public conversation about what Shriver terms the “humiliation” faced by this population.

The crusade has brought both admiration and derision for Shriver, who will soon be the only member of the Kennedy family serving in a high-profile position in Washington. An excerpt:

… Shriver — who wants to be a catalyst for social change — would like to further expand the mission [of Special Olympics], addressing unemployment (90 percent of people with intellectual disabilities do not work, he says, but half of Special Olympians have jobs) and taking on elite private schools in Washington, such as his alma mater, St. Albans, and Sidwell Friends because they don’t routinely admit students with intellectual disabilities, as many public schools do.

But there are only so many fights to pick at once. In Bethesda, Shriver helps organize “unified” sports contests that place young people with disabilities on the same teams as those who don’t. At the same time, he has sent his own kids to top private schools, such as Maret, that he says are not “inclusive” and guesses he “could be accused of being hypocritical. But this is a 100-front war.”

(Photo from the Washington Post; More photos here.)

From the Washington Post:

Federal law does not require Catholic schools to educate students with disabilities, and financial constraints have historically made it difficult for the schools to do so.  Church officials now say that is starting to change, with recent figures showing that 42 percent of Catholic schools offer some services for kids with disabilities.

“Children with disabilities have a right to a faith-based education,” said a school superintendent from a Virginia diocese. “We want to provide that as best we can.”

From the Washington Post, a report that Rahm Emanuel will join the campaign to end use of ‘R-word.’  The White House chief of staff apologized for using the word “retarded” during a meeting last year, and told a group of disability rights advocates that he will join their campaign to discourage the use of the word. The story described Emanuel as “the sometimes foul-mouthed senior Obama adviser.”

Special Olympics chairman Tim Shriver and five other advocates said Emanuel had “sincerely apologized.”  An excerpt:

“We are happy that he will join more than 54,000 other Americans in pledging to end the use of the R-word at www.r-word.org, and that he committed that the administration would continue to look for ways to partner with us, including examining pending legislation in Congress to remove the R-word from federal law,” they said in the statement.

Other coverage:

On ABC News (video), Bill Weir takes a closer look at the history and significance of the ‘R-word.” He reports that the word had been used by professionals as a sensitive alternative to terms like “idiot,” “imbecile” and “moron” to describe patients, but has increasingly come to to be seen as offensive. Forty-four states have renamed their departments of mental retardation and federal legislation would strip the word from federal regulations. But there are some who defend the term and Rahm Emanuel’s use of it, he says.

“We might sanitize one word, but then another one is going to pop up in its place. It’s all about the attitude toward that group and the culture,” said Georgetown University linguistics professor Deborah Tannen.

Rush Limbaugh used the word repeatedly in his national radio broadcast. On his website, the transcript appears under the headline “The president’s chief of staff apologizes to ‘f — ing retards.’” An excerpt: (more…)

Ben Smith, writing in politico.com, says the Special Olympics disputes a claim from an unnamed White House source that Tim Shriver accepted Rahm Emanuel’s apology for calling liberals “f–ing retarded.”

An excerpt:

The vice president for communications at the Special Olympics, Kirsten Seckler, told me that this account of the conversation is “inaccurate.”

“Tim didn’t accept his apology,” she said. “Tim can’t do that. He can’t accept an apology on behalf of all people with disabilities.”

Earlier posts here.

The Wall Street Journal’s “Washington Wire” blog reports that Peter Berns, CEO of The Arc of the United States, is calling on White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to make a public expression of regret for his use of the epithet “f — ing retarded.”

The White House has acknowledged that Emanuel used the term, first reported in the Wall Street Journal, and that he has apologized privately by phone to Special Olympics chairman Tim Shriver.

“A private call does not seem to us to be what’s called for in this situation,” said Berns. “Rather there should be some kind of statement indicating that he understands what a sensitive issue this is for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.”

Emanuel’s call to Shriver marked the second such apology from the Obama White House. Last spring, President Obama apologized to Shriver privately after joking on the Tonight Show that his poor bowling score was “like the Special Olympics or something.”

In statements Tuesday night, both the Arc and the Special Olympics organizations said their officials would be among a group that will meet with Emanuel at the White House on Wednesday afternoon. In its release, the Special Olympics said the group would discuss “the suffering and pain of people with intellectual disabilities that is perpetuated by the use of the terms ‘retard’ and ‘retarded’ as well as the damage that can be done by the casual use of the R-word – even if it is not directed toward people with intellectual disabilities.”

See also:

Emanuel steps up his apology — Wall Street Journal “Washington Wire” blog

Emanuel apologizes, in wake of Palin slam — New York Times ‘The caucus” blog

Obama’s chief of staff sorry for ‘retarded’ remark — AP/Yahoo