I never learned how to use a sewing machine. Despite enrolling in a few weekend workshops at makerspaces throughout Seattle, I couldn’t seem to figure out how to transfer my knowledge from the classroom sewing machine to the vintage mint green one (or even, later, to the perky new compact white one) on my own craft table. Problems with threads getting stuck during a backstitch; problems with the bobbin thread not being picked up; needles breaking; puckered-up seams: it’s hard to fix a hole. It’s almost impossible to do anything but make the hole worse when you don’t understand the tool you’re using to fix it.
Sewing by hand, however, allows me to see what I’m doing real-time – to make a correction as it is called for, depending on the needs of the garment, slowly iterating and responding to the creation as it’s created. This was my approach to mending the holes that my preschool-aged daughter perpetually had in the knees of all her jeans.
Heading from the bus into my rhetoric classroom two weeks ago, notifications started to pop up on my phone, all articles in response to Trump’s executive order asking RFKjr’s MAHA Commission to produce a report on psychiatric prescriptions for children, including medications for ADHD, depression, and anxiety. My students usually self-disclose their disabilities, which is the only way I know of any specific conditions, diseases, or diagnoses since accommodations for college students are focused on the actual learning environment accommodations, not the circumstances that warrant them. I’ll admit that I panicked as I entered my classroom; my family intimately knows the dangers of having your medication supply cut off due to shortages and delayed prescriptions due to appointment wait times. Surveying the room at 8:45am as I walked in, every single student sat hunched over their tiny phone screen. I asked, as I often do in a class whose focus is public discourse, “anyone seen the executive order having RFKjr assess the threat of prescriptions for children and young adults?” The shoulder hunches remained but a dozen eyes quickly popped up to meet mine. They’d seen.
Sometimes I read the room, note the heavy mood, and we start with the NYT Connections to gather as a cohort and get our brains going with a think-aloud. But the eyes on this day didn’t flicker back to their screens; they stayed on me and told me that students wanted to dive in. A few students admitted they were still on their parent's insurance, and mused together whether that made them “children” susceptible to RFKjr’s anticipated attempts to restrict or reign in psychiatric prescriptions. Another shared that there was no way her little brother would “be okay” without his meds. Yet another student wondered what this would do to the pharmaceutical black market.
Always looking for patches, fixes, and hacks into systems of privilege for an often under-resourced student demographic, I shared known options to explore should the need arise, including contacting insurance for vacation supply overrides or asking doctors to rewrite scripts for 90- or 120-day supplies.
Lest you think this post is sponsored by Big Pharma, I’ll get real clear: I have a PhD, not an MD. I am also writing elsewhere about my family’s tragic experiences with increased suicidality due to SSRIs. I know my tools and my limits. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. does not.
But what I also know is that 17 states are suing to dismantle Section 504 – yes, the same 504 you might have heard people say when they refer to their kids or students having a 504 plan in school. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs and institutions receiving any federal funding. That Section 504 is being challenged in Texas vs Becerra (Xavier Becerra was the Health and Human Services Secretary replaced by RFK). The 16 states that have joined Texas in the suit have all asked that Section 504 now be declared unconstitutional. The trigger for the suit? Anti-trans, far-right political action against the inclusion of nondiscrimination protections for individuals with gender dysphoria. Many of our trans and nonbinary students would be hurt right alongside our students with Type 1 diabetes, or with cerebral palsy, or with ADHD, or with a broken shoulder. Coupled with the continued threats of a dismantled Department of Education, now more than ever it’s vital for faculty to create inclusive spaces that don’t rely on institutionalized mandates from IEPs or 504 plans in K12, or Letters of Accommodation as they’re called in higher ed, but on conversations with students. It’s slower. So is sewing by hand.
As a faculty member, I can’t fix the gaping holes created as the fabric of the protective resources in our institutions are being ripped apart. I can offer patches, sewn by hand, with any thread or ribbon or string or strand of grass I can find.
I love this!