• TURNED AGENCY AROUND: Appointed at UT-Austin as the Student Government (SG) Agency Director for Students with Disabilities (SD) at a time when the position was not only in danger of going unfilled but also facing a movement by others in SG to have it completely eliminated. http://www.utexas.edu/studentgov/people/personal_page/index.php?email=suran3@hotmail.com (temporarily unavailable)
     
  • COALITION BUILDER: (ONE-YEAR BEFORE FACEBOOK) Created an online, password protected alumni network (Fig. 1) with authentication (Who is this person?) and authorization (What online applications and services may this person access?) independent of existing University of Texas authentication and authorization systems like these: http://acsprod.mccombs.utexas.edu/forums/login.aspx . Independence allows other student groups and clubs to create their own online student coalitions.
     

    Figure 1. The web site would be useful to over a thousand registered UT Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD), http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/ssd/, fellow Longhorns (many more unregistered) as well as tens of thousands of alumni with (1) blind and visual impairments, (2) orthopedic, mobility and other impairments, (3) traumatic brain injury and head injuries, (4) deafness and hard of hearing, (5) learning disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) and (6) psychological disabilities.

     

  • ADVISED ADMINISTRATORS: Unanimously passed a Student Government Resolution that compared UT-Austin to other flagship universities:
     

    2) Similar universities afford much more generous staffing resources for students with disabilities: This year, in 2003, the University of Arizona at Tucson has 28 full time staff persons serving 1400 students with disabilities while UT-Austin serves 1010 disabled students with only six full time staff persons.4
     
     3) Other universities allocate dramatically higher budgetary resources as well: The University of Arizona at Tucson’s Disability Resource Center (DRC) has an unsubsidized, entirely university funded budget of $1.5 million that reflects a 13 percent decrease over the last two years due to Arizona’s poor economy; however, UT-Austin’s Services for Students with Disabilities office has a subsidized budget of just $719, 521.5

    The Resolution also educated UT Administration on current violations at UT regarding Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II and Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and suggested potential funding resources to make UT-Austin a world-class university for disabled students.
     

  • SOLICITED PRIVATE SECTOR: After months of persistence, began a dialogue with staff persons responsible for the America's Best Colleges edition of US News magazine, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/rankindex_brief.php. Suggested publishing a Best Colleges for Students with Disabilities edition and provided a strategic plan after analyzing the advantages and disadvantages to consumers in the most popular disabled education resources references currently on the market. Received an e-mail acknowledgement from the Executive Editor of the America's Best Colleges edition of US News magazine.
     
  • LANDSLIDE CAMPAIGNING VICTORY: LOW VOTER TURNOUT MEANS SMALL NUMBERS HAVE LARGE IMPACTS! With greater voting access for blind and mobility impaired students through first-time online voting (Fig. 3), we focused the over one thousand disabled students' voting power behind the Students First political party (Fig. 2) helping make political history and changing the political dynamics at the nation's largest university forever (Fig. 4). http://www.dailytexanonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/02/27/3e5f647480057?in_archive=1 (temporarily unavailable)
     
    Students First Dominates SG