Friday, April 24, 2009

Panel Discussion on Disabilities at Ohio State

This past Wednesday I participated in a panel discussion on disabilities and campus life sponsored by the Mount Leadership Society. The Lantern did an article on it titled “Students with disabilities highlight resiliency, optimism.” I would like to thank the Mount Leadership Society for hosting such a wonderful event and the Lantern for covering it. As one of the panelists I am featured in the article:

Benzion Chinn, a graduate student in the History Department, had the group laughing at some of the bizarre situations he's gotten into because of his Asperger's syndrome. Once, he said, police were called on him for the exaggerated motions he was making while speaking. He was only asking his professor a question about his test, but someone had mistaken his demeanor as threatening.
He said he has difficulty processing social information, such as body language. "So when people are silent and I am just talking on and on about 16th century religion wars, I assume that people are really, really interested," Chinn said. "On the flip side, what I am very good with is analytical forms of information, particularly text." He joked about how convenient this is for all the reading he has to do in the pursuit of his Ph.D.

For a more detailed discussion on the police incident see here.

2 comments:

Miss S. said...

In the first sentence "sponsored by" is repeated.

Izgad said...

Took care of it. Thank you.