The authors decided to frame their recommendations as a manifesto as a response to Allison Kafer's framing of crip manifestos. A crip manifesto is framed as unending dedication to create spaces that embrace disability fluidity. Kafer frames crip menifestos as also doing the work of not just imagining futures but also still attending to the present by holding space for both everyday actions and overarching structural change.

Crip Manifestos

Crip futures is used to describe futures where the tenets of crip studies detailed in this article (interdependence, crip time, and the fluidity of disability) uproot the academic ableism our current system is seeped in. In order for crip future to come to fruition we must work to challenge the ableist limitations of day-to-day academic functioning.

Crip Futures in Academia

The authors offer suggestions on creating cripped classrooms that are
- framed as a manifesto
- build crip futures
- address academic gatekeeping
and
- engage intersectionality

University of Wisconsin - Madison

The authors acknowledge that creating cripped classrooms often requires more resources - in the form of funding, space, labor, time, or planning. But the authors note that part of the reasons that professors feel like they don't have the support to create cripped classroom environments is because of academic ableism that requires more labor to break out of pre-existing structures that are not meeting the full access needs of our students.

Resource and Time cost of Cripped Classrooms

"I very much want all students to thrive in this course. If you need an accommodation in order to fulfill the requirements of the course, you are encouraged to contact [Student Disability Services]. Disabilities may be apparent or non-apparent, such as physical disabilities, learning disabilities, and psychological disabilities (mental health). I also know that disability is fluid and that the nature of disability sometimes changes throughout the semester. As such, you might not know all of your accommodation needs at the start of the semester. I hope that, to the extent possible, you will feel comfortable disclosing this information and discussing your disability/ies with me. I want to work against the stigma often associated with disability and the ways that higher education is ableist. It is your right to be successful in this course."

Example: Syllabus Statement from Elisa Abes

Forced intimacy is defined as disabled people being expected to share personal information, including personal medical information, in order to navigate ableism.

Forced Intimacy

COVID-19 was a mass disabling event and led to a influx of newly disabled college students, and previously disabled students now figuring out how to manage new forms of disability. We often think of disability in COVID-19 in terms of long COVID but there was also many students who realized their neurodivergence during COVID-19 lockdowns or students who developed anxiety and depression in the wake of the pandemic. At the same time the turn to remote education in 2020 has given us tools (e.g. Zoom, Microsoft teams) and grace that we should continue to extend to our students even after lockdown.

Importance of Having Professors Embrace Disability as Fluid with COVID-19

Access intimacy was coined by Mia Mingus to name the elusive comfort when someone truly gets your access needs without needing to put in strenuous effort to self advocate for your needs, or how you relax when all your access needs are being met. Note Access Intimacy can be achieved regardless of the views of disability held by the person being meeting said access needs.

Access Intimacy

Faculty can create more interdependent and cripped classrooms by making sure that supports are available in how they structure their class from the beginning instead of being put in on an individual basis when students are struggling - examples of built-in supports include course note-takers and flexible deadlines for assignments.

Built-in Supports

Offering group office hours can be a great way to crip office hours since many students feel anxious taking one-on-one with their professor and group office hours allow students to realize they are not the only person asking for help.

Cripping Office Hours

While peer mentoring, academic coaches, and student peer tutoring can foster interdependence unless faculty crip their courses these supplemental supports serve only as a band-aid to academic ableism.

Supplemental Supports

While the authors gesture at the idea that access needs can change throughout a semester, I think that the authors fail to properly address the idea of conflicting access needs. Conflicting access needs is the term used to describe when students have access needs that are completely or nearly mutually exclusive taking into account the physical space. One example of conflicting access needs would be a student needed dimmed lights because of sensory sensitivities and another student needing bright overhead lights because they are low-vision. There is this idea that we can make spaces that are completely accessible but this gets complicated by conflicting access needs.

Conflicting Access Needs

Abrams' narrative provides an example of how the timelines placed by academia can place stigma on students operating in Crip Time. While Abrams took an extra year to complete her undergraduate degree for her own well being but still experienced feelings of failure and isolation. In Abrams case academia's expectations and grouping of students by the expectation of a four year trajectory from matriculation to graduation (e.g. the Class of 2024) compounded with internalized ableism and compulsory able-mindedness Abrams was already experiencing. While Abrams was engaging in Crip Time by taking a fifth year she also wanted to be done with undergrad to escape the reminder that she was trying to catch up to here peers.

The Stigma of Operating within Crip Time

Applying crip authenticity in the classroom calls on professors to approach accessibility from a perspective of open and ongoing dialogue with students rather than having students submit medical documentation once a semester and get a prescriptive set of accommodations. Crip authenticity calls on accessibility to be a dynamic process that makes space for the fluid nature of disability. Dialogue and narrative-based inquiries - like those shown at the University of Arizona's accommodation system - shift the focus of accommodations to students' own testimony to changing needs rather than focusing on whether access specialists and professors perceive a student as disabled. 

Applying Crip Authenticity to Academia

Abrams, E. J., Floyd, C. E., & Abes, E. S. (2024). Prioritizing Crip Futures: Applying Crip Theory to Create Accessible Academic Experiences in Higher Education. Disability Studies Quarterly, 43(4). https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v43i4.8270

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