Dr. Oliver Sachs, well known for his landmark work, Awakenings (1982), documented the 1988 students’ strike at Gallaudet University in Washington, the world famous liberal arts college for the deaf. In March of that year, when the presidential vacancy was about to be filled, the students campaigned to have the first deaf president in the school’s 124 year history. According to Sachs’ eye-witness account, in selecting the only hearing candidate and ignoring the depth of conviction on this issue, the authorities were amused of being paternalistic, of holding values based on an implicit view of incompetence and of appearing to believe “that deaf people should be printers, or work in the post office, do ‘humblejobs’ and not aspire to higher education” (Sachs, 1989).

Despite these attitudes, inclusive post-secondary education is making headway in Canada. A community college in Toronto, a university in Edmonton and a CEGEP(community college) in Montreal have been including students with mental handicaps for several years now.

I was Coordinator of the Humber College Community Integration through Cooperative Education (CICE) program in Toronto, Ontario, from 1984 to 1990. The program was designed to support educational opportunities at college for individuals with a mental handicap — the people for whom the college doors had previously been shut.

As coordinator of the new program, I was immersed in the ideology and culture of the college, learning about its history and values, and listening to the language of education. I became convinced that these students truly belonged there.