Access Club Mission Statement
The goal of the Access Club is to provide support to one another as disabled students in order to better ourselves, while educating the students and staff about various disabilities at Las Positas College.
This club was created to ensure that the voices of all persons with all varieties of disabilities are heard and properly represented at Las Positas College. Our goals should be to have valid useful information available to all students and staff at Las Positas. Creatively we can share with others, who are interested, the true meaning of our individual disabilities; through fundraisers, parties, and planned activities.
All throughout life we watch those around us and sometimes the people we see have a disability. Many misunderstandings happen when we don't fully understand what we are seeing. This creates a misconception of who the person is. We, as disabled students, have the responsibility to provide valid information on our disability - information that will clearly state what our abilities are, leaving no room for misconception.
If we are to succeed in doing this, we need to do the research ourselves, and we need to state our positions and convictions. We need to let people know that it's okay to ask about our disability. We should all be comfortable enough to answer questions with confidence and pride.
While educating the staff and students at Las Positas, inevitably, we will answer many of our own questions. In our meetings these questions should be addressed, along with the philosophy of the independence of disabled students and overall concerns. The philosophy of a persons ability are individual, but that is what the club should examine. If a person is abusing their rights as a disabled person, it should be discussed. If a person is not being treated with fairness and justice, for their specific disability, this too must be examined by the club collectively and objectively.
We should also be an orderly club, one, which follows the rules and goes through the chain of command. Always confront the person who is equal to or directly above your position in life. After which, if a response is not desirable or met in a timely manner, speak to the person directly above the person you began with, etc. If all else fails, and the club is behind you, and the battle being fought is one of great importance, there are papers printed on campus where by we may convey our concerns and there are local papers that might even be interested. Writing letters and making petitions are two effective ways of communicating concerns, but you always want to save a strike as a very last resort. If you can deal with a problem, deal with it in the nicest way possible. Give this task to those who will represent everyone involved with the utmost respect, but also with a firm desire to accomplish what needs to be done, while never forgetting the objectives stated above.